Three real briefs, three real songs
These were typed by people who never made an account, so they are as unpolished as briefs get. Listen to what each one returned before reading the advice below, because the advice is drawn from them.
The prompt that made it
“A bright indie-pop song about a bicycle ride along the river at sunrise, female vocal, handclaps”
One subject with a concrete image (a bicycle, a river, sunrise), one voice, one production detail. The song has all three and a chorus that stays on the image.
The prompt that made it
“i am feeling good relaxed .”
Five words and a full stop. The engine chose the genre (a soul ballad), the singer and the story. It is a good song; it is just not one anybody asked for. Short briefs hand the decisions to the machine.
The prompt that made it
“A melancholic acoustic breakup song, honest and raw, quiet verses and a soaring chorus”
The brief names a genre, a mood, a vocal quality and, crucially, a structure: quiet verses and a soaring chorus. Measured, the verses sit 3 to 4 dB below the choruses, and the song drops about 8 dB before the last one. Fewer than a third of descriptions ask for a structure; it is worth the extra five words.
What people type, and how long the songs come out
Measured from the files, the median song made on Tunely runs 3:18. The spread is wide, and most of it is decided by what you give it rather than by luck.
| Finished length | Share of songs | What usually produced it |
|---|---|---|
| Under one minute | 4% | About half are short pasted lyrics, around eight sung lines; the rest are described songs that came back short. |
| One to two minutes | 10% | Short pastes: eight sung lines come back at about 1:10, sixteen at about two minutes. |
| Two to three minutes | 24% | Pastes of about seventeen to thirty sung lines, which land near 2:30, and a quarter of described songs. |
| Three to four minutes | 37% | The usual result of a description: half of described songs land between 2:38 and 3:49. |
| Four to five minutes | 17% | Sixty sung lines or more, or a slow song that spends longer on every line. |
| Over five minutes | 8% | Nearly three in four are long pasted lyrics, typically around ninety sung lines. The longest ran 7:19. |
Six per cent of songs are made with the Instrumental switch on. If you want no voice, use the switch rather than writing “no vocals” in the description: the switch is a setting the engine follows, while a word in the description is one request among many and is not guaranteed.
What goes in the sentence
Simple mode reads your description and nothing else; the pills under the box only add words to it. So every choice you care about has to be in that text, typed or tapped. A useful brief usually carries five things, in any order. You do not need all five, but each one you leave out is a decision the engine makes for you.
| You want to decide | Put this in the brief | Leave this out |
|---|---|---|
| The sound | A genre or two plain adjectives: “warm acoustic folk”, “dark synth-pop” | An artist's name: it is rewritten into a plain description of the style before the song is made, so you get a paraphrase, not the artist |
| The voice | “female vocal”, “deep male voice”, “a duet”, “a choir”, “rap” | “a good singer” (every brief gets one) |
| The pace | “slow”, “upbeat”, “around 90 BPM”, “a slow build” | Nothing: with no pace word, the pace is the engine's choice |
| The instruments | One or two: “piano and strings”, “handclaps and guitar” | A long list: one or two instruments come through, eight blur into a generic mix |
| The story | One subject and one concrete detail: “a bicycle ride along the river at sunrise” | Abstract nouns only: “love, hope and dreams” produce lyrics about love, hope and dreams |
The description box takes up to 2,000 characters — it stopped at 400 in the studio and 500 on the home page until 19 September 2026, when we measured that about three in ten descriptions were arriving cut off at exactly one of those limits. Two lines is still plenty; the third is where people start contradicting themselves.
Simple mode or Custom mode
Both modes end in the same place: two finished takes with vocals, lyrics and a full arrangement. They differ in who writes the words.
| Simple | Custom | |
|---|---|---|
| You give it | A description of up to 2,000 characters | Your own lyrics (up to 5,000), plus a style line |
| Who writes the lyrics | Tunely, from your description | You; the engine sings them as written |
| Control over structure | By describing it (“quiet verses, big chorus”) | Exact: section tags like [Verse] and [Chorus] are followed |
| Length | Half land between 2:38 and 3:49 | Follows your lyrics: eight sung lines come back at about a minute, forty to sixty at about three and a half |
| Setting the length | Not available | On Pro and Ultra: a Length setting from 1:00 to 5:00 under Pro fine-tuning |
| Best for | A song from an idea, a gift, a mood | A poem you wrote, a jingle with exact words, a translation you already have |
What you get, and when
Twenty to thirty seconds after Create, the lyrics appear with a stream you can already listen to. The finished takes usually land in about a minute (nine in ten inside three minutes), two of them every time, on every plan; most run between two and four minutes. Listening and sharing are free and carry no watermark. Keeping the MP3 is a one-time $1.99 per song on the free plan and included on Pro and Ultra, which also add lossless WAV, stems, lyric files and a commercial-use licence with a certificate per song. A generation that fails is not charged; the credit comes back on its own.
Before you press Create
- The brief names a sound (a genre or two adjectives), a voice and a pace.
- It has one subject and one detail you could photograph.
- No lyrics from an existing song: they are declined before generation. An artist's name gets rewritten into a style, so describe the style yourself.
- If you want no vocals, the Instrumental switch is on.
- If you pasted lyrics, you counted them: about thirty-five sung lines make three minutes, eight lines make about one.
Sources
Written and fact-checked by the Tunely team · Updated