What Soul Forge does
Upload a song. Soul Forge analyzes the audio, extracts musical features (genre, tempo, key, energy), then generates:
- Band name and genre classification
- Member list with names, roles, and short bios
- Band bio - origin story, aesthetic, influences
- Cover art for the band card
- Vocalist gender (you set this manually for accuracy)
- A collectible card that pulls all of it together
The card is shareable, downloadable, and becomes the identity for everything else you do on the platform - radio stations, feed posts, artist profile.
Before you forge
You need a clean audio file. See audio-upload-issues for requirements. Quick version:
- MP3/WAV/M4A/FLAC/OGG
- Under 50 MB, under 10 minutes
- At least 30 seconds of actual music (not silence or spoken intro)
Step-by-step
- Open Soul Forge.
- Upload your audio file. Wait for analysis to finish - this usually takes 20-30 seconds.
- Review the detected attributes: genre, tempo, key, energy. Adjust if clearly wrong.
- Set vocalist gender - the analyzer cannot detect this reliably, so you pick it manually (male, female, non-binary, instrumental).
- Click Forge Identity. The AI generates the band name, bio, and member list.
- Review and regenerate individual pieces you do not like. Band name and bio can be re-rolled independently.
- When you are happy, click Generate Cover Art. This creates the card's background image.
- Click Save Band. The card is now in your collection and accessible at
/virtual-artists/<slug>/.
Why the audio analysis matters
Soul Forge uses librosa (Python audio analysis library) to extract real musical features from your upload. This is not fake - the genre detection is based on actual spectral analysis, MFCC features, and tempo estimation.
Because the analysis is real, garbage input produces garbage output:
- 10 seconds of silence followed by audio -> the analyzer scores the silence, not the music
- Very quiet recordings -> low energy detection, generic "ambient" classification
- Multiple genres stitched together -> the analyzer picks the dominant segment
- Live recordings with crowd noise -> tempo and key detection suffers
If the analysis is clearly wrong for a normal music track, report it.
Getting a name you actually like
The band name generator is the piece users re-roll most. Tips:
- Feed it a genre-specific track. A generic electronic track gets generic electronic names. A dirty garage punk track gets visceral punk names.
- Regenerate the bio first, then the name. Sometimes a good bio makes a mediocre name feel right.
- Edit manually. After generation, all fields are editable. You can punch up the name yourself and keep everything else.
The band website
When you save a band, a live page is published at:
https://aetherwavestudio.com/virtual-artists/<slug>/
This page pulls the card, bio, member list, and attached songs. Share this URL as your public artist page. It is built from templates in virtual-artists/ghosts-online/ - the design is consistent across all bands.
Adding songs to the band
Once the band is saved, you can attach songs to its discography:
- Go to
/u/<your-username>(your artist profile) - Open the band card
- Click Add Song and pick from your music gallery
Songs appear on the band's public page and become part of your artist identity.
Your band's public profile
Once a band is saved, it gets its own profile page at /band/{band-id}. Click any band card on your artist profile to open it. The page shows the band's identity, debut track, and (when you generate one) a full press kit. Full breakdown: band-profile.
Next steps
- Create a radio station owned by your band: create-station
- Share the card to the community feed for visibility
- Upload more songs and attach them to the band