About Music Symbols
Seven of these fifteen characters are functional musical notation with defined values — a quarter note is not decorative shorthand for "music", it is a duration. The other eight are emoji depicting instruments and equipment. Both get used to signal that an account is music-related, but only one group means something specific to a musician.
What the Notes Actually Mean
♩ is a quarter note — one beat in common time. ♪ is an eighth note, half that duration. ♫ is two eighth notes beamed together, and ♬ is two sixteenth notes beamed. They are durations, not generic music marks.
This matters mainly in one direction: ♫ and ♬ are the two most commonly used as decoration, and to a reader who reads music they specify a rhythm. That is rarely a problem, but it is worth knowing that the character is saying something.
♯ Is Not the Hash Sign
♯ is the sharp sign, U+266F, and # is the number sign, U+0023. They are different characters that look similar at a glance, and they are drawn differently: the sharp has two vertical strokes and two slanted horizontals, while the hash has slanted verticals and level horizontals.
Writing a musical key as "C#" uses the number sign; the correct character is "C♯". Software treats them as unrelated, so a search for one will not find the other.
♭ is the flat sign and ♮ the natural, which cancels a previous sharp or flat. Together the three cover standard accidentals.
The Instrument Emoji
🎵 🎶 🎼 🎧 🎤 🎹 🎸 🥁 are emoji with fixed artwork. 🎵 and 🎶 are the generic "music" marks most people actually want when they reach for a note, and they read clearly at small sizes where a text note can be nearly invisible — which is why they turn up in so many Instagram and TikTok bios.
The seven notation characters are classified as pictographic, which means a small number of platforms may draw them in colour rather than as monochrome text — worth checking if you are relying on them matching a styled name.