Read/Write Web has an great round-up of visualization tools, which they define as:
a technique to graphically represent sets of data. When data is large or abstract, visualization can help make the data easier to read or understand. There are visualization tools for search, music, networks, online communities, and almost anything else you can think of. Whether you want a desktop application or a web-based tool, there are many specific tools are available on the web that let you visualize all kinds of data.
I’m going to check out especially the music visualization tools, that show connections between musical artists, and may introduce you to new ones you like. Here’s a screenshot of one, Musiccovery:
Visualization is not to be confused with “pre-visualization”, software we filmmakers use to storyboard films, before shooting–to show how the movie will look, one effect being to reduce wasted time on set. This category is often abbreviated to “Previz“. One of the most popular ones is Google Sketchup (free too!), from which this previz sketch was apparently made:
