I used tarot once for a story (I'm a children's book writer).
For each character in the story, I drew a card, to base their personality on.
Also, for the whole story, I drew some cards to see how I'd direct the story.
Eventually I didn't use the info the cards gave me, because the story 'wrote itself' and I could have done perfectly well without the cards, but it was a nice experiment though.

But yesterday, I really had a good experience with the tarot in regard to music.
Besides a writer, I'm also a flamenco musician, and I decided I wanted a deeper understanding of the character of the different flamenco forms (for example, there's tangos, bulerías, alegrías and more).
I remembered I did a study once of the court cards, to get to know them better.
It was an excercise from the book 'Tarot for Your Self' by Mary K. Greer.
For each court card you had to describe what kind of music it reminded you of, what sort of person you thought it was, if the court card was to be a color, what color would it be, etc.
Eventually you would fill this out in a chart. A very useful excercise and very nice to do.
It gave me a lot of new insights in the court cards and I was more able to understand the differences between all of them, and to see each of them as a unique individual with a personality all of it's own.
I would highly recommend Greer's book to anyone who wants to deepen his knowledge of the tarot.

I figured it would also be a good system to grasp the character of different flamenco forms.
So I did the same kind of thing with some of the same questions and also made up my own questions, like: 'Which animal does this form remind me of? What sort of clothing style? Etc.'
I also picked tarot cards from the major arcana, court cards and number cards for each form.
For bulerías for example, which is a very quick, energetic and fiery form, I picked the magician and the chariot, the king of wands and the ace of wands.
To see the forms put together in a chart, made me see the differences between each of them very clearly.
All in all this excercise has helped me to understand the 'personalities' of each flamenco form better!

I use them in writing, too, for enriching and deepening characters.

I use a combination of oracle cards and tarot cards. It's really helped me get unstuck a few times. I really respond to visual images so it does help.