[AlecSchueler]

What kind of contexts would branching be useful for? Working on the bass line on one branch while tweaking the lyrics on another to later merge them together?

Linear version control makes total sense to me: "Can we go back to the version from 2 weeks ago" "which one was that? "Before we removed the hi hat!"

But I struggle to think of a realistic case for branching.

[nativeit]

I use it for re-mixes, snapshots, and live performance configurations. Basically anything that requires making changes to Main that are either ephemeral (in which case, branches are deleted when no long required), or otherwise specific to a purpose (in which case branches persist for as long as they are useful).

Edit: I suppose those are not generally collaborative, so from the context of merging branches from other contributors, I would probably agree that it becomes a little messy when most of the contributors are not also fluent (or even passingly familiar with) git.

[tlb]

You could try adding more cowbell on a branch, test it with audiences, and revert if they don't like it.

But branches are only really useful if you can merge. If the more-cowbell branch tests well, and the faster-tempo branch also tests well, you'd like to merge them. But the file formats in music production don't generally allow such things.