By person above, by occasion here
The cards above are sorted by who the song is for. When there is a date or an event, start from the occasion instead: those pages are written around what that day needs.
| The occasion | Start with | What that page adds |
|---|---|---|
| A birthday | Birthday songs | Getting the name sung, and why four pasted lines make a fifteen-second song |
| Mother's Day | Mother's Day | Describing her in three or four lines, and the length for each way of giving it |
| Father's Day | Father's Day | The date, which differs by country, and writing the words yourself |
| A wedding or a first dance | Wedding songs | Fitting a first dance into two and a half minutes |
| An anniversary | Anniversary songs | Putting the number of years in, which is what usually goes missing |
| A graduation | Graduation songs | Songs for one graduate or a whole class |
| Saying sorry | Apology songs | What an apology has to contain before it is sung |
| Someone who has died | Memorial songs | Bringing the words you already have, and the gentle tone set for you |
Gift songs run long, and that is a decision
Measured from the files, songs made as gifts run 3:48 at the median, against 3:18 for everything made here, and about one in six passes five minutes, twice the share across the site. The reason is the words: about half of gift requests arrive as finished lyrics, and a song lasts as long as its words take to sing. Those run 4:08 at the median, and one in four passes five minutes.
Long is right for a song sent to one person, who will listen alone and probably twice. It is wrong for a room. Before you write, decide where it will play:
| Where it will play | Aim for | How |
|---|---|---|
| Sent to them, to hear alone | As long as the words need | Paste all of it; nobody is waiting |
| Played at the table, everyone listening | About two and a half minutes | Seventeen to thirty-one sung lines |
| Under a slideshow of photos | Three to three and a half minutes | Thirty-two to fifty-nine sung lines; the pictures carry the rest |
| As a surprise in a toast | Two minutes or so | One verse and the chorus twice |
The line counts come from how long pasted lyrics run across the site; the full table is on the text-to-song page.
What gift requests look like
The biggest groups are songs for a mother and birthday songs; fathers and partners come next. Together, everything made for someone or for an occasion is about one request in six on Tunely.
| Gift requests, 4 September to 4 October | Share |
|---|---|
| Started from the giver's own lyrics | about 1 in 2 |
| Made by visitors who had not signed up yet | nearly 1 in 2 |
| Made on the free plan | about 4 in 5 |
| Made with the Instrumental switch on | fewer than 1 in 20 |
| Finished length, measured from the files | 3:48 at the median; eight in ten between 2:08 and 5:13 |
The ones that describe instead of pasting run long too: half are longer than seventy words, and a quarter pass two hundred. Describing a gift means describing a person, and that takes a paragraph rather than a phrase.
Handing it over
Make it a few days early. Each generation returns two takes, and reading the lyrics back usually earns a second round. Then choose the form: the link plays on any phone with no account and no watermark; the MP3 is $1.99 on the free plan and included on Pro and Ultra; and the music video takes a photo of them and sings part of the song, a one-time purchase that takes ten to twenty minutes to render.
There is no example song on this page. A gift song names the person it is for, usually more than once, and that name is not ours to publish. The text-to-song page has two pasted examples that name nobody.
Before you press Create
- The occasion page, or the person card, that fits
- One memory only you could know
- Who is singing, and to whom
- Where it will play, and so how long it should be
- A few days in hand for a second round
Written and fact-checked by the Tunely team · Updated