State-of-the-art pretrained music models for training, evaluation, inference

Marble is a modular, configuration-driven suite for training, evaluating, and performing inference on state-of-the-art pretrained music models. It leverages LightningCLI to provide easy extensibility and reproducibility.

News and Updates

• 📌 Join Us on MIREX Discord!
• 2025-06-04 Now MARBLE v2 is published on main branch! You could find the old version in main-v1-archived branch.

Key Features

1. Modularity: Each component—encoders, tasks, transforms, decoders—is isolated behind a common interface. You can mix and match without touching core logic.
2. Configurability: All experiments are driven by YAML configs. No code changes are needed to switch datasets, encoders, or training settings.
3. Reusability: Common routines (data loading, training loop, metrics) are implemented once in BaseTask, LightningDataModule, and shared modules.
4. Extensibility: Adding new encoders or tasks requires implementing a small subclass and registering it via a config.

┌──────────────────┐
│ DataModule       │  yields (waveform, label, path), optional audio transforms
└─▲────────────────┘
  │
  │ waveform                     Encoded →   hidden_states[B, L, T, H]
  ▼
┌─┴───────────────┐   embedding transforms (optional)
│ Encoder         │ ────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
└─────────────────┘                                                     │
                                                                        ▼
                                                         (LayerSelector, TimeAvgPool…)
                                                                        │
                                                                        ▼
                                      ┌─────────────────────────────────┴──┐
                                      │ Decoder(s)                         │
                                      └────────────────────────────────────┘
                                                                  │ logits
                                                                  ▼
                                                   Loss ↔ Metrics ↔ Callbacks

Getting Started

1. Install dependencies:

   # 1. create a new conda env
   conda create -n marble python=3.10 -y
   conda activate marble
   
   # 2. install ffmpeg
   conda install -c conda-forge ffmpeg -y
   
   # 3. now install other dependencies
   pip install -e .
   
   # 4. [Optional] downgrade pip to 24.0 if you are using fairseq modules
   # pip install pip==24.0
   # pip install fairseq
   # some encoders (e.g. Xcodec) may require additional dependencies, see marble/encoders/*/requirements.txt
   

2. Prepare data: python download.py all.

3. Configure: Copy an existing YAML from configs/ and edit paths, encoder settings, transforms, and task parameters.

4. Run:

   python cli.py fit --config configs/probe.MERT-v1-95M.GTZANGenre.yaml
   python cli.py test --config configs/probe.MERT-v1-95M.GTZANGenre.yaml
   

5. Results: Checkpoints and logs will be saved under output/ and logged in Weights & Biases.

6. Inference: We provide scripts for inference on pretrained models. See the Inference SOTA SSL MIR models section below.

Supported/In-coming Tasks and Encoders

👈Click here to view the encoders and downstream tasks currently supported or under development in MARBLE.

---

Encoders

Name	Description	Paper	Link
CLaMP3	Cross-Modal & Language-based Music Pretraining v3. Aligns audio, sheet music, MIDI, and multilingual text via contrastive learning.	arXiv:2502.10362	GitHub sanderwood/clamp3
DaSheng	Deep Audio-Signal Holistic Embeddings: masked autoencoder trained on 272 k h of diverse audio.	arXiv:2406.06992	GitHub richermans/dasheng
identity	Pass-through encoder.	—	—
MERT	Music understanding via large-scale self-supervised training with acoustic & musical pseudo-labels.	arXiv:2306.00107	GitHub yizhilll/MERT
MuQ	Self-supervised music representation with Mel Residual Vector Quantization.	arXiv:2501.01108	GitHub Tencent-ailab/MuQ
MuQMuLan	Two-tower contrastive model combining MuQ audio and text for zero-shot tagging.	arXiv:2501.01108	Hugging Face OpenMuQ/MuQ-MuLan-large
MusicFM	Masked-token modeling in music using random projections & codebooks.	arXiv:2311.03318	GitHub minzwon/musicfm
Qwen2_5OmniEncoder	Qwen 2.5-Omni Audio Tower: a multimodal generalist model supporting text, image, audio, and video.	arXiv:2503.20215	GitHub QwenLM/Qwen2.5-Omni
Qwen2AudioInstructEncoder	Instruction-tuned variant of Qwen2-Audio Encoder for interactive audio chat.	arXiv:2407.10759	GitHub QwenLM/Qwen2-Audio
Xcodec	Improves codec semantics for audio LLMs by integrating semantic features pre-quantization.	arXiv:2408.17175	GitHub zhenye234/xcodec

---

Tasks

[v1] tag indicates the task is implemented in MARBLE v1 and will be adapted to marble v2 soon, and [Planning] tag indicates the task is under development.

Name	Description	Paper	Original Link
Chords1217	Large-vocabulary chord recognition on 1 217 songs drawn from Isophonics, Billboard & MARL collections.	Mauch & Dixon (ISMIR 2019) Large-Vocabulary Chord Recognition	GitHub repo
EMO	Emotion regression on EmoMusic (744 clips × 45 s; valence & arousal; R²)	Bhattarai & Lee (ISMIR 2019) Automatic Music Mood Detection Using Transfer Learning	EmoMusic dataset
GS	Key detection on GiantSteps Key (604 EDM tracks × 2 min; 24-class major/minor; weighted accuracy ±20 cents), plus 1 077 GiantSteps-MTG-Keys for train/val.	Knees et al. (ISMIR 2015) Two data sets for tempo estimation and key detection…	GiantSteps Key dataset
GTZANBeatTracking	Beat tracking on GTZAN Rhythm	Tzanetakis & Cook (2002) Musical genre classification of audio signals	Marsyas datasets
GTZANGenre	Genre classification on GTZAN (10 genres; 30 s clips; 930 tracks after artist-stratified “fail-filtered” split; accuracy)	Tzanetakis & Cook (2002) Musical genre classification of audio signals	Marsyas datasets
[Planning] HookTheoryChord	Chord labeling on HookTheory user-created song hooks (chord symbols).	Melody transcription via generative pre-training	GitHub repo
HookTheoryKey	Key estimation on HookTheory hooks.	Melody transcription via generative pre-training	GitHub repo
[Planning] HookTheoryMelody	Melody prediction/completion on HookTheory hooks.	Melody transcription via generative pre-training	GitHub repo
HookTheoryStructure	Structural label prediction on HookTheory hooks.	Melody transcription via generative pre-training	GitHub repo
[Planning] HXMSA	Music structure analysis on the Harmonix Set (912 Western pop tracks).	Nieto et al. (ISMIR 2019) The Harmonix Set: Beats, Downbeats, and Functional Segment Annotations	HarmonixSet GitHub
MTGGenre	Genre tagging on MTG-Jamendo, using split 0.	Bogdanov et al. (ICML 2019) The MTG-Jamendo Dataset for Automatic Music Tagging (PDF)	MTG-Jamendo dataset
MTGInstrument	Instrument tagging on MTG-Jamendo, using split 0.	Bogdanov et al. (ICML 2019) The MTG-Jamendo Dataset for Automatic Music Tagging (PDF)	MTG-Jamendo dataset
MTGMood	Mood/theme tagging on MTG-Jamendo, using split 0.	Bogdanov et al. (ICML 2019) The MTG-Jamendo Dataset for Automatic Music Tagging (PDF)	MTG-Jamendo dataset
MTGTop50	Top-50 tag prediction on MTG-Jamendo, using split 0.	Bogdanov et al. (ICML 2019) The MTG-Jamendo Dataset for Automatic Music Tagging (PDF)	MTG-Jamendo dataset
MTT	Multi-tag auto-tagging on MagnaTagATune	Law et al. (ISMIR 2009) Evaluation of Algorithms Using Games: The Case of Music Tagging	MagnaTagATune dataset
[v1] NSynth	Pitch-class note classification on NSynth (340 h; 4 s excerpts; 128-class; accuracy)	Engel et al. (2017) Neural Audio Synthesis of Musical Notes with WaveNet Autoencoders	NSynth dataset
[Planning] SHS	Cover-song cliques dataset: a subset of the Million Song Dataset organized into 5 854 cover groups (18 196 tracks) for cover-song identification.	Bertin-Mahieux et al. (2011) The Million Song Dataset	SecondHandSongs dataset
[Planning] SongEval	Holistic song-aesthetics evaluation on 2 399 full-length songs (≈ 140 h) with 16 professional annotators across 5 aesthetic dimensions.	Yao et al. (arXiv 2025) SongEval: A Benchmark Dataset for Song Aesthetics Evaluation	SongEval toolkit
[v1] VocalSet	Solo singing-voice dataset (12 vowels × 4 registers × 30 singers).	Wilkins et al. (ISMIR 2018) VocalSet: A Singing Voice Dataset	VocalSet dataset
[Planning] WildSVDD	Anomaly detection on WILD (Singing Voice Deepfake Detection Challenge) tracks (real vs. AI-generated).	Zhang et al. (ICASSP 2024) SVDD 2024: The Inaugural Singing Voice Deepfake Detection Challenge	SVDD Challenge

Inference SOTA SSL MIR models

We are collaborating with MIREX to introduce state-of-the-art SSL-based models for Music Information Retrieval (MIR). We believe that the future of MIR lies in Self-Supervised Learning (SSL), as acquiring labeled data for MIR is costly, and fully supervised paradigms are too expensive. In contrast, the computational cost is continuously decreasing and will eventually become more affordable than manual labeling.

Key Prediction

The sota/predict_key.py script performs key prediction on audio files using a pretrained model. It automatically downloads the model from Hugging Face if necessary, processes audio clips in batches, and saves the predictions (key and confidence) to a JSONL file. To run, use the following command:

python sota/predict_key.py --filelist_path <filelist> --output_path <output> --batch_size 16 --download_dir <dir>

# You may reproduce the training/testing (if you have access to corresponding data) by running 
# bash sota/reproduce_key_sota_20250618.sh

Project Structure

.
├── marble/                   # Core code package
│   ├── core/                 # Base classes (BaseTask, BaseEncoder, BaseTransform)
│   ├── encoders/             # Wrapper classes for various SSL encoders
│   ├── modules/              # Shared transforms, callbacks, losses, decoders
│   ├── tasks/                # Downstream tasks (probe, few-shot, datamodules)
│   └── utils/                # IO utilities, instantiation helpers
├── cli.py                    # Entry-point for launching experiments
├── sota/                     # Scripts for state-of-the-art models and inference
├── configs/                  # Experiment configs (YAML)
├── data/                     # Datasets and metadata files
├── scripts/                  # Run scripts & utilities
├── tests/                    # Unit tests for transforms & datasets
├── pyproject.toml            # Python project metadata
└── README.md                 # This file

See marble/encoders/ for available encoders. See marble/tasks/ for available tasks.

🚀 Adding a New Encoder

Marble supports two flexible extension modes for encoders:

Mode 1: Internal Extension

1. Implement your encoder under marble/encoders/:

   # marble/encoders/my_encoder.py
   from marble.core.base_encoder import BaseAudioEncoder
   
   class MyEncoder(BaseAudioEncoder):
      def __init__(self, arg1, arg2):
         super().__init__()
         # initialize your model
   
      def forward(self, waveforms):
         # return List[Tensor] of shape (batch, layer, seq_len, hidden_size)
         # or return a dict of representations
   

2. Reference it in your YAML:

   model:
     encoder:
       class_path: marble.encoders.my_encoder.MyEncoder
       init_args:
         arg1: 123
         arg2: 456
   

Mode 2: External Extension

1. Place my_encoder.py anywhere in your project (e.g. ./my_project/my_encoder.py).

2. Use the full import path in your YAML:

   model:
     encoder:
       class_path: my_project.my_encoder.MyEncoder
       init_args:
         arg1: 123
   

Optional:

• If your encoder needs embedding-level transforms, implement a BaseEmbTransform subclass and register under emb_transforms.
• If you need custom audio preprocessing, subclass BaseAudioTransform and register under audio_transforms.

emb_transforms:
  - class_path: marble.modules.transforms.MyEmbTransform
    init_args:
      param: value

audio_transforms:
  train:
    - class_path: marble.modules.transforms.MyAudioTransform
      init_args:
        param: value

🚀 Adding a New Task

Marble supports two extension modes for tasks as well:

Mode 1: Internal Extension

1. Create a new task package under marble/tasks/YourTask/:

   marble/tasks/YourTask/
   ├── __init__.py
   ├── datamodule.py    # Your LightningDataModule subclass
   └── probe.py          # Your BaseTask subclass, e.g. probe, finetune, fewshot
   

2. Implement your classes:

   # datamodule.py
   import pytorch_lightning as pl
   
   class YourDataModule(pl.LightningDataModule):
       def setup(self, stage=None):
           ...
       def train_dataloader(self):
           ...
       # val_dataloader, test_dataloader, etc.
   
   # probe.py
   from marble.core.base_task import BaseTask
   
   class YourTask(BaseTask):
       def __init__(self, encoder, emb_transforms, decoders, losses, metrics, sample_rate, use_ema):
           super().__init__(...)
           # custom behavior here
   

3. Point your YAML to these classes:

   task:
     class_path: marble.tasks.YourTask.probe.YourTask
     init_args:
       sample_rate: 22050
       use_ema: false
   
   data:
     class_path: marble.tasks.YourTask.datamodule.YourDataModule
   

Mode 2: External Extension

1. Place your task code anywhere in your project (e.g. ./my_project/probe.py, ./my_project/datamodule.py).

2. Reference via full import path:

   model:
     class_path: my_project.probe.CustomTask
   
   data:
     class_path: my_project.datamodule.CustomDataModule
   

Citation

@article{yuan2023marble,
  title={Marble: Music audio representation benchmark for universal evaluation},
  author={Yuan, Ruibin and Ma, Yinghao and Li, Yizhi and Zhang, Ge and Chen, Xingran and Yin, Hanzhi and Liu, Yiqi and Huang, Jiawen and Tian, Zeyue and Deng, Binyue and others},
  journal={Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems},
  volume={36},
  pages={39626--39647},
  year={2023}
}