Music models that run on 16 GB

4 models with published weights that fit in 16 GB — the common laptop. Counted at four-bit quantisation, weights only, leaving the machine about a third of its memory and a gigabyte for context: room for roughly 16 billion parameters. A mixture of experts is counted in full, because it is held in full even though only a few experts compute.

The commonest laptop configuration, and the point where a genuinely useful model runs locally: fourteen billion parameters at four-bit fits with room to spare for the context. Expect a capable general assistant that will not match the frontier, and remember that anything else the machine is doing competes for the same memory.

Models that compose and render music from a description. They are priced per generation or per second of audio rather than per token. The question that decides whether you can use one commercially is not the price but the terms: makers differ sharply on who owns the output and whether it may be sold, and that is on the maker's page, not in the rate card.

• YuE2-3BMultimodal Art Projection3.6B≈2.4 GB at 4-bit
• ACE-Step-v1-3.5BACE-Step3.5B≈2.3 GB at 4-bit
• musicgen-melodyfacebook1.6B≈1.0 GB at 4-bit
• musicgen-smallAI at Meta0.6B≈0.4 GB at 4-bit

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