Spacoust

Satellite images, as sound

Hear the planet.

Spacoust turns satellite images of Earth into music. AI reads what is happening in the scene, then the image's light and color become a melody you can listen to.

Download for Windows v1.0 · Spacoust.exe · 147 MB
Sample Earth image: deep blue ocean, a green and sand-colored landmass, white polar ice and clouds, with the night side darkening to the right
104 BPMMinor pentatonicKey of G0:00 / 0:21
Sample: this image, scanned left to right. Each bar is one column of pixels; dotted gaps are dark areas, played as silence.

From pixels to music in three steps

No setup, no audio knowledge. Open any satellite image or Earth data map and press one button.

  1. Open an image

    Any satellite image or data map works: JPG, PNG, WebP or TIFF.

  2. AI reads the scene

    OpenAI vision describes what it sees, names the phenomenon (wildfire, hurricane, sea ice) and sets the mood and tempo.

  3. Listen and save

    Spacoust scans the image left to right and composes a piece you can play and export as a WAV file.

What you are hearing

The music is computed from the image itself, so the same image always produces the same piece. Nothing is random.

Brightness
Pitch of each note. Brighter column, higher note. Brighter image overall, faster tempo.
Darkness
Silence. The night side of Earth is heard as rests.
Saturation
Tone color. Vivid regions sound richer, pale regions purer.
Edges
Percussion. Coastlines, storms and fire fronts add rhythm.
Red vs blue
Stereo position. Warm areas lean one way, cool areas the other.
Green

Major pentatonic

Vegetation, growth

0 · 2 · 4 · 7 · 9

Blue

Minor pentatonic

Oceans, water

0 · 3 · 5 · 7 · 10

Red / orange

Phrygian

Heat, fire, desert

0 · 1 · 3 · 5 · 7 · 8 · 10

Grey / white

Dorian

Ice, clouds

0 · 2 · 3 · 5 · 7 · 9 · 10

The dominant color picks the scale. Numbers are semitones above the key note.

Install

  1. Download Spacoust.exe. If your browser warns about the file, choose Keep.
  2. Double-click it. Windows may show “Windows protected your PC” because the app is new and unsigned. Click More info, then Run anyway.
  3. The first launch takes 5 to 10 seconds. Then click Open image and Analyze & Sonify.

Requirements

System
Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
Internet
Needed for the AI analysis
Space
About 150 MB
Install
None. It runs as a single file.