Stell-R – trace musical influence paths via minimum spanning tree

- **Stell-R** is an interactive web tool that visualizes musical influence as a graph (a "minimum spanning tree"), letting users explore connections between artists, genres, and songs. - It was created by **Terence Broad**, a UK-based artist and researcher. The "Stell-R" name may be a play on "stellar" or "Stella" (star). - The tool pulls data from open music databases (MusicBrainz, Wikipedia) and influence lists (e.g., *1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die*, rateyourmusic.com charts). - **Minimum spanning tree**: a network concept that connects all nodes (artists/albums) with the shortest total "distance," revealing the most direct influence paths while pruning redundant links. - Why it matters: Influence is usually described anecdotally or in linear family trees. Stell-R makes it graphical and browsable, letting users trace chains like *Kraftwerk → David Bowie → Brian Eno → Talking Heads* in one view. - Similar projects: **Every Noise at Once** (genre map), **Music-Map** (artist similarity). Stell-R is distinct for focusing on explicit *influence* rather than acoustic similarity or genre co-occurrence.