Two real pop briefs, both cut off
Both were typed by visitors who had not signed up, and both ran into the length limit without their writers noticing. Listen first, then read what each brief lost.
The prompt that made it
“Create an original French pop-urban / melodic rap song titled “À Contretemps”. Male vocal, young-sounding, emotional and melancholic, with a soft slightly raspy tone. The verses should feel intimate, vulnerable and almost whispered at times. The pre-chorus gradually builds tension, then the chorus becomes more powerful and emotional while staying melodic. Do not imitate any specific real singer. Tempo: 96 BPM. Key: A minor. Production: melancholic piano as the main instrument, atmospheric pad”
Typed on the home page, which stopped at 500 characters then: the brief ends mid-list, at “atmospheric pad”, and the rest of the production notes never arrived. What did arrive worked. The title it asked for came back as the title, and the chorus is built on it: “On s'est aimés à contretemps”. The two takes ran 3:22 and 3:26.
The prompt that made it
“Africa, Africa, sing the names with me, / Fifty-four countries from sea to sea. / Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, / Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, / Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Congo, / Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt we know. / Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini, / Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, / Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, / Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi. / Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Moro”
All 54 countries of Africa, typed into the studio box, which stopped at 400 characters then. The brief stops at “Moro”, so the song names 33 countries, Algeria to Morocco, while its chorus still sings “fifty-four countries”. The engine wrapped the list in a pre-chorus, a chorus and a rap verse of its own (the menus were set to Duet and K-pop).
The fix is the same for both: what matters goes first, and anything long or exact goes to Custom mode, where the lyrics box takes 5,000 characters and every word is sung as written.
What the old 400-character box cut off, measured
Pop briefs are long. In the first weeks of September the median description in Simple mode ran 384 characters, and plenty are clearly drafted elsewhere and pasted in. Until 19 September 2026 the box kept only the first 400 characters in the studio and the first 500 on the home page, and whatever was pasted past that was dropped. It takes 2,000 now, with the style menus still folded in on top.
| Simple-mode descriptions, 2–18 September 2026 | Share |
|---|---|
| Arrived exactly at a limit, cut off | 32% |
| The same, among descriptions of 300 characters or more | 48% |
| Median description length | 384 characters |
Order still decides what survives an edit, and how a long brief reads: the hook or title, the voice, the speed, two instruments, then the rest. The counter under the studio box shows how much of the 2,000 is left.
Lead with the hook
Pop turns on one line, so give it one, then the three things that decide how it sounds.
- A title or a line to repeat. “A chorus built on the phrase ‘not tonight’.” In Simple mode the engine writes its own title and lyrics, so treat this as a request; in Custom mode the Title field and your chorus lines are used as written.
- The voice. Pick it in the Voice menu (Female, Male, Duet, Bright female, Breathy, Harmonies and more) or write it: “a bright female vocal with stacked harmonies in the chorus”.
- The speed. Only about one pop brief in five says how fast. The Tempo menu has named speeds and BPM ranges; dance-pop sits around 115 to 128 BPM, a pop ballad around 70 to 80.
- The shape. “A quiet verse, a big chorus, a drop after the second chorus.” Structure words are rare in briefs and cost only a few characters.
Pop on Tunely, by the numbers
Pop is the most requested of the genres we measure: nearly one request in five names it in the description, the style or the genre menu.
| Pop songs | All songs | |
|---|---|---|
| Median length (measured from the files) | 3:13 | 3:18 |
| Described, median length | 3:02 | 3:15 |
| From lyrics people brought, median length | 3:39 | 3:22 |
| Three to four minutes long | 41% | 37% |
| Made with the Instrumental switch on | 6% | 6% |
| Descriptions that say how fast | about 1 in 5 | about 1 in 7 |
Pop comes out a little shorter than the site as a whole.
Keeping it, sharing it, using it
Streaming the song from its link is free and carries no watermark. The MP3 is a one-off $1.99 per song on the free plan; Pro and Ultra include MP3 and WAV. Putting it where it earns money, a monetised channel or a release on streaming services, is commercial use, which Pro and Ultra license for every song in the library, each with a certificate.
Before you press Create
- The hook or the title comes first in the brief.
- Voice and speed are chosen, in the menus or in words.
- The brief fits the box, hook first: it takes 2,000 characters now.
- Lists, names and exact lines go in Custom mode, not in the description.
- If you set the menus, they say the same thing as the sentence.
Sources
Written and fact-checked by the Tunely team · Updated