Ethno Musicology, formerly comparative musicology, is cultural musicology or the study of music in its cultural context.

One of the neatest definitions of ethno musicology is the study of “people making music”. In other words, ethno musicologists are as interested in the people making the music as in the sounds of music they are making, and they try to consider the whole process and contexts through and within which music is imagined, discussed and made, not just the musical sound structures themselves.

The majority of ethno musicological studies have focused on communities bounded in various ways-by nation, region, or city, or by factors such as ethnicity, age group, gender, religion or class.

More rarely, ethno musicological studies are concerned with universal properties of human sounds or logical systems. Some studies have been comparative.

Many ethno musicologists have documented and described the musical style of large repertoires in specific communities, endeavours requiring field observation and collection. It is difficult to determine the limits of ethno musicological activity.

Department of Music, SOAS, University of London, offers a graduate programme in ethno musicology where music transcription is taken up as one of the papers. University of Berkeley, California, offers a B.A degree programme in Music where music transcription is covered.