Trala brings funding to $15M to make music education accessible to everyone on Earth.

Highlights:

  • We’ve raised an $8M Series A led by Alexis Ohanian’s firm, Seven Seven Six.
  • We’re hiring for Product, Sales, Educator, and Wild Card roles at www.trala.com/careers.

People have been learning instruments for at least 60,000 years, making music education more ancient than agriculture, mathematics (Pythagoras was a music teacher!), and writing. 

But even though more than 90% of people still pick up an instrument at some point in their lives, there is no globally trusted brand for learning an instrument today. Music ed has many, many problems:

  • Music teachers are highly trained in performing an instrument but not in teaching it.
  • The industry focuses on suburban kids, to the exclusion of adults, rural learners, and anyone not in a middle class household.
  • Snobbery and race / class issues throttle the industry, preventing people of color and those who don’t love classical music from even trying to learn.

At Trala, our mission is to make world-class music education accessible to every single person on Earth. We are building an online music school that serves students of all ages, in all countries, learning all genres of music. We invented tech that listens to you play your instrument and gives you instant feedback on your practice, then paired that with 1-on-1 lessons with teachers that are as diverse and talented as our students. Our vision is to raise up a new generation of musicians that wouldn’t have had access to music education otherwise. 

Our first 1000 students included truck drivers, politicians, VCs, NFL players, surgeons, construction workers, grandmothers, ambulance drivers, and maybe you (go sign up)! We welcome everyone and we can’t wait to see who joins next. 

We are excited to now announce our $8M Series A, bringing our total funding to $15M. Seven Seven Six led the round, with participation from Lachy Groom Fund, Altman Capital, Next Play Ventures, and Concrete Rose Ventures. This adds to an impressive list of early supporters including Luis von Ahn, the CEO of Duolingo, Dylan Field, the CEO of Figma, Emilie Choi, the COO of Coinbase, and the GRAMMY-winning violinist Joshua Bell. 

"Trala is an incredibly accessible platform for those interested in learning an instrument," said Cristina Georgoulakis, Partner at Seven Seven Six. "By making great music education so widely accessible, especially to those who haven't typically had access to it before, Trala is going to create a new generation of musicians from all walks of life."


"I didn't get far in my childhood piano or saxophone lessons, but that's probably because I didn't have Trala,” added Alexis Ohanian, Founder of Seven Seven Six. “Now I'm 39 and hungry to finally learn to play an instrument and excited that I have Trala to help me." 

In 2022, we grew by 14X and hired 30 new music teachers. With this new funding, we will continue to grow our core offering for learning the violin and look towards instrument expansion. We look forward to providing up to 300 new jobs for musicians over the next two years and continuing to build an incredible community of music teachers and learners. 

We believe that global access to great music education will allow hundreds of millions of new people to start learning an instrument for the first time. This will usher in an “all-ships-rise” moment for the music industry: more musicians, more instrument sales, and more great new music that then inspires more people to learn and teach an instrument in a beautiful virtuous cycle. 

If you are interested in joining this mission, please visit https://trala.com/careers!