System online// Vol · I · Tielman Brothers// Curated archive// Curator-reviewed
The family tree behind every song.
Every song is the end of a long line of influence. Song Zero is the liner notes for the streaming age — read the story behind a track, trace the roots that fed it, then discover the bands flying in the same orbit.
// modern liner notes. cultural lineage. fact-checked. curator-reviewed.
// how each volume is researched — 9 stages● 159 published
01MusicBrainz
Anchor research
Canonical artist, title, year.
02MusicBrainz
Branch mapping
Musical roots and branches.
03Spotify
Track selection
~12 picks across branches.
04Wikipedia · Discogs
Per-track research
Multi-source dossier per track.
05Fact Check · AudioDB
Fact-check
Independent verification.
06Editorial
Editorial blurbs
Written paragraph per track.
07Spotify API
Spotify playlist
Real, listenable order.
08Custom SVG
Family tree
Interactive SVG + framing prose.
09Editorial desk
Curator review
Human approval before publishing.
// as seen on
// latest
12 OF 159 ENTRIES · BROWSE THE ARCHIVE →
// how it works
9 STAGES · ~4 MIN · DETERMINISTIC
[STAGE 01] INPUT
Enter any song.
Choose your anchor track. Any song, any genre, any era. Set how wide you want the genealogy — 5 to 30 tracks across roots and branches.
[STAGE 02–08] EXECUTE
Watch it build.
A 9-stage research process cross-references influence relationships across MusicBrainz, Discogs, and Wikipedia, fact-checks every claim, and drafts historical blurbs — each reviewed by a human curator before publication.
[STAGE 09] DELIVERY
Get your genealogy.
An interactive visualization. A Spotify playlist. Per-track blurbs written like liner notes. Share the link or submit it for the curated archive.
9
// pipeline stages
8+
// apis cross-referenced
✓
// fact-checked
✓
// curator-reviewed
// pricing
FREE TO TRY · 4 TIERS · PAY-PER-RUN
// pay per genealogy — 3 sizes × 3 quality tiers, $1.49 — $9.99
view pay-per-run →What is Song Zero?
Song Zero is a tool that traces a song's musical genealogy — the chain of styles, scenes, and recordings that produced it. You submit an anchor track, and a multi-stage research process assembles an editorial article with an interactive family tree of its influences, a curated Spotify playlist, and cited sources. Every published volume is fact-checked against multiple music databases and reviewed by a human curator before it goes live.
What is Song Zero?
Song Zero is a tool that traces a song's musical genealogy — the chain of styles, scenes, and recordings that produced it. You submit an anchor track, and a multi-stage research process assembles an editorial article — an interactive family tree of its influences, a curated Spotify playlist, and cited sources — which a human curator reviews and approves before it is published.
What is a musical genealogy?
A musical genealogy is a family tree of a song’s influences: the genres, regional scenes, and earlier recordings that fed into it, drawn as branches that converge on the anchor track. Each branch represents one lineage (for example Delta Blues or Jamaican Ska), and convergence points mark where those lineages merge.
What is an anchor track?
The anchor track is the song you submit. Song Zero constructs the genealogy backwards from it, tracing the styles and recordings that led to that song rather than the ones it later influenced.
How does Song Zero research a song’s influences?
A nine-stage pipeline runs anchor research, branch mapping, per-track research, an independent fact-check pass, editorial blurb writing, Spotify playlist assembly, and an interactive SVG family tree. Every published volume is reviewed by a human curator before it goes public, and sources are cited inline.
Is Song Zero accurate?
Each generation passes a dedicated fact-check stage and is curator-reviewed before publication, with sources (audio archives, scholarship, oral histories, label discographies) linked at the foot of every share page. It is an editorial interpretation of musical lineage, not a definitive historical record.