---
name: music-refs
description: "Music references from MusicBrainz (source full dump: 3.0 M artists, 4.6 M release groups, 2.35 M tagged recordings) — artist notes (genres, tags, era, country, key releases, similar artists by distinctive genres), the top artists of a genre and era, a song's genres, and the style in words for Suno without names. Data-derived reference examples; no prepared index is bundled. Part of the music reference set."
---

These creative references describe source experiments with external tools. Use your own supported account and tools; this download installs no automation. Settings and timings are experimental observations, not current FlashBoards availability. Use only media and voices you have permission to use.

# music-refs · references from MusicBrainz

Input: the person's {reference} — an artist, a song or a genre (any spelling: aliases are searched too).

## Reference lookup

Search MusicBrainz for the artist, genre or recording, including aliases. Collect artist notes, similar artists, a genre/era shortlist and a style description with names removed. The ranking methods below describe the source's prepared indexes, not features installed by this download; use accessible MusicBrainz data or your own licensed index.

- **Artist notes**: genres (MusicBrainz genre list), top tags with vote counts, era (the decade of the first key album), type, country, years, rating, the six key releases, the MusicBrainz link.
- **Similar**: artists sharing a genre, ranked by cosine over genres and tags where a rare genre (sophisti-pop, quiet storm) weighs more than a common one (pop, soul) — IDF — times √fame (tag votes + ratings).
- **Genre**: artists ranked by the share of their tag votes for that genre × fame; an era filter keeps one decade.
- **Style**: the two main genres + the two most distinctive (IDF), up to five sound tags, the era ("1980s sound"), the vocal (person's gender, or a "female/male singer" tag). Names of the artist and its aliases are stripped.

## How to propose

Compare at most five lines — the named reference and 3–4 similar ones, each "name · country · era · genres" — then write the style line. Add the arrangement in words that fits the genres (instruments, tempo, production); keep the MusicBrainz genres as they are. The style line goes to `music-write` and the external song request (no `source`: a new song, never a cover of the reference's recording). Use ordinary notes or conversation; no choice-card UI is required.

## Data

- Source dataset (not bundled with this download): MusicBrainz dump 07.10.2026 (`https://data.metabrainz.org/pub/musicbrainz/data/fullexport/20261007-002147/`), containing artists, release groups, tagged recordings, aliases and genres. The source used a genre/tag index (223 k artists, 27.6 MB) and a tagged-recordings index (1.64 M recordings, 166.6 MB); those source-prepared indexes are not supplied.
- Licences: core data CC0; tags, genres per entity and ratings CC BY-NC-SA — non-commercial use.
- Tags are crowd votes: a small artist may have one or two; inspect the available tag vote counts before trusting the genres, not a private field named by the source tool.

## Example run (reference only — never reuse for a person)

Style test: the MusicBrainz references for Sade and “Smooth Operator” + Rhodes, soprano sax, fretless bass, 92 BPM → a new song «Slow Hours» on Suno V6, 2 takes in 62 s.

An artist lookup for “Sade” → Group · United Kingdom · 1982 · smooth jazz, contemporary r&b, jazz pop, soul, sophisti-pop, smooth soul, trip hop, jazz, pop, quiet storm · 1980s · Diamond Life (1984), Promise (1985), …; similar: George Benson, Babyface, Anita Baker, Jessie Ware, Meli'sa Morgan. A “sophisti-pop” genre lookup → Eg & Alice, Swing Out Sister, Level 42, ABC, Johnny Hates Jazz, Go West (73 artists). First run 6.6 s with the index download, then ~3 s.

Those lookup timings belong to the source's prepared index, not a general MusicBrainz service promise. No example songs, source indexes or runner are delivered or required.