One brief already gives you two beats
Thirteen words made both of these. They share a mood and a tempo and nothing else — different piano, different length. That is the unit you are building a session out of.
The prompt that made it
“A chill lo-fi hip-hop beat for studying, rainy window, soft piano, no vocals”
“A chill lo-fi hip-hop beat for studying, rainy window, soft piano, no vocals.” 2:54, and its sibling take from the same generation runs 2:57 with a different piano figure. Two tracks for one go.
So the arithmetic is simpler than it looks: five generations, ten beats, roughly half an hour. Ten generations gets you an hour with enough variety that nothing repeats.
A session plan, not a loop hunt
Keep the frame identical and change exactly one thing per generation. The set then sounds like one record instead of a playlist someone shuffled.
| Generation | Change only this | Example wording |
|---|---|---|
| 1 — the anchor | Nothing; this is your reference | “chill lo-fi beat for studying, soft piano, rainy window, no vocals, around 75 BPM” |
| 2 | The melodic instrument | “…muted electric guitar instead of piano…” |
| 3 | The texture | “…tape hiss and vinyl crackle, slightly detuned…” |
| 4 | The drums | “…brushed drums, softer kick, no hats…” |
| 5 | The room | “…late night, rain outside, distant traffic…” |
Keep the tempo word identical in all five. Tempo is what makes a set feel continuous; instruments are what keep it from being boring.
Three words that do the most work
Lofi is a production sound before it is a genre, so the words that matter are about the recording, not the notes.
- Dusty / tape / vinyl crackle — the imperfection the whole style is named after. Without one of these you get clean, modern chill-hop.
- Slow, around 70–85 BPM — the head-nod range. Write the number; it is the one thing you should never leave to chance in a set.
- No vocals — and then turn on the Instrumental switch, because the words alone are not reliable: “no vocals” in the description is a request, not a setting, and it can still come back sung.
Making them sit together
Three practical things once you have ten beats. Ask for “no big changes, stays flat” in every brief so nothing jumps out while someone is reading. Put the busiest one first and the quietest last, so the set winds down rather than restarting. And keep an ear on the endings — a track that stops dead is fine inside a playlist, but if you are looping one behind a stream, ask for “a loopable ending that returns to the start”.
Streams, videos and what you are allowed to do
Sharing links is free. A monetised stream or a client's video is commercial use, which comes with Pro and Ultra — a licence covering every beat in your library, with a certificate and a licence code, including beats made before upgrading. Pro and Ultra also give lossless WAV, which matters more than usual here: a set of beats gets re-encoded by the streaming platform, and starting from WAV keeps the hiss sounding like hiss instead of like compression.
If a platform files an automatic claim, the Content ID guide covers disputing it.
Before you build a set
- One anchor brief written down, with a tempo number in it.
- The Instrumental switch on for every generation in the set.
- One thing — and only one — changed per generation.
- “No big changes” in the brief, so nothing jumps out mid-session.
- Ten generations planned for an hour; five for half.
Sources
Written and fact-checked by the Tunely team · Updated