The short version: you can have AI write a usable brand song in under an hour using tools like Suno or Udio, for around ten pounds in generation credits, but you need to write a proper brief first and check the commercial licence before you use it anywhere public. The tricky part isn’t the technology. It’s making the song sound like your brand instead of sounding like every other AI song made that week.
Why brands are suddenly doing this
Two years ago, commissioning original music meant hiring a composer, paying £500 to £3,000 for a short brand track, and waiting two to three weeks for revisions. Now a founder with no musical training can open Suno, type a brief, and have a finished 90-second track before their coffee goes cold. That shift is real and it’s why I keep getting asked about it by clients who want a sonic identity but don’t have a music budget.
I want to be clear about what this is good for. A brand song works as intro music for a podcast, background for a promo video, a hook for TikTok content, or a short jingle for ads. It is not a replacement for the kind of emotionally crafted music that makes a campaign iconic. The John Lewis marketing strategy built years of Christmas advert loyalty on original, human-composed music with a specific emotional arc. No AI tool in 2026 does that reliably yet. It does the useful, functional version well. Keep your expectations calibrated to that.
The tools worth using right now
Three tools do the heavy lifting for brand songs at the moment.
- Suno is the most flexible for full songs with lyrics. Free tier gives you 50 credits a day (roughly 10 songs), the Pro plan is $10 a month for 2,500 credits, and it’s the one I use most because it handles genre blending well.
- Udio produces cleaner, more polished vocals and is stronger for anything that needs to sound radio-ready. Pricing sits close to Suno’s, around $10 a month for the standard plan.
- AIVA is better if you want instrumental only, no lyrics, aimed more at background scoring than a singable jingle. It’s priced per licence tier, starting around €15 a month for the standard commercial licence.
All three let you export stems or full mixes, and all three now offer some form of commercial usage rights on paid tiers. Read that licence page before you assume you own what comes out.
Step by step: how I did this for a client
Last spring a fintech client asked for a 30-second jingle to open their weekly webinar. Budget was tiny, deadline was two days, and their brand brief was one sentence: “cheerful, trustworthy, not corporate.” Here’s what I did, in order.
- Step 1: Write the brief in plain words before touching any tool. I wrote three adjectives (warm, upbeat, credible), the tempo feel (mid-tempo, not frantic), and one comparison track they liked the energy of. Skipping this step is why most AI-generated brand songs sound generic. The tool needs direction, not just a genre tag.
- Step 2: Feed the brief into the prompt as a structured description. My actual prompt to Suno was something like: “Upbeat acoustic pop, warm female vocal, fintech brand intro, 30 seconds, chorus-only structure, lyrics about confidence and clarity, no dark or moody undertones.” Specific beats vague every time.
- Step 3: Generate in batches of four, not one at a time. I ran three batches, 12 versions total, across 47 minutes. Most were unusable. Two were close. One nailed the brief on the first proper listen.
- Step 4: Extend or remix the winner. Suno lets you extend a clip or regenerate just the middle section, so I trimmed the intro and tightened the chorus without starting from scratch.
- Step 5: Check the licence tier before delivering it. The client was on my Pro account, which covers commercial use, so the track was cleared for the webinar and their YouTube channel.
- Step 6: Get a human ear on it before it goes live. I played it to two people who’d never heard the brief. Both said “sounds a bit like a phone ad” before I’d told them anything. That feedback led me back to Step 2 for one more pass, adjusting the vocal tone away from the ad-jingle cliché.
Total time: just under two hours across two sittings. Total cost: about £8 in credits. That’s the honest maths on this, and it’s faster than any composer quote I’ve ever had.
The bit most guides on this topic conveniently skip
Here’s the uncomfortable part. Ownership of AI-generated music sits on shakier legal ground than most brand owners realise. Suno and Udio grant you a commercial usage licence on paid plans, which covers you to use the track in your marketing. But the underlying copyright status of purely AI-generated output is still legally unsettled in most jurisdictions, including the UK and US. If you commissioned a session musician to write your jingle, you’d own clear, tested copyright. With an AI track, you’re relying on a platform’s terms of service rather than settled copyright law. For a podcast intro or an internal video, that risk is close to zero. For a track you plan to trademark, put on a national ad campaign, or license to other businesses, get a media lawyer to look at the platform’s terms first. I’ve seen founders assume “I generated it, so I own it” without ever reading the actual licence page. That assumption can bite later, particularly if the model was trained on copyrighted material without artist consent, which several ongoing lawsuits against these platforms are specifically about.
The other thing nobody wants to say out loud: a lot of AI brand songs sound interchangeable because thousands of brands are running near-identical prompts through the same handful of models. “Upbeat, warm, trustworthy” produces a very recognisable AI sound now, the same way stock photography of laughing salad-eaters became a joke a decade ago. If your song needs to be distinctive, not just functional, you need a more specific, weirder brief than most people write. Feed it a reference to a specific decade, a specific instrument, or a lyric line that’s about your product, not a mood board of generic adjectives.
Where to use the finished song
Once you’ve got a track you’re happy with, think about where it earns its keep rather than making it once and forgetting it.
- Use a 15-second cut as the intro to every piece of video marketing you produce, so it becomes a recognisable audio signature over time, the same way a sting works for a TV channel.
- Trim a hook-sized clip for short-form content. If you’re studying the songs that perform well on TikTok, notice they almost always lead with a hook in the first three seconds. Structure your AI-generated track the same way.
- If you’re putting a clip onto Instagram Stories or Reels, check the platform’s music rules first. There’s a real difference between using a licensed commercial track and adding a song to your Instagram Story legally, and an AI-generated original track sidesteps most of that mess anyway, which is one genuine upside worth knowing.
- Use the instrumental-only version as background for webinars, product demos, and email video walkthroughs where a full vocal track would be distracting.
What a good brand song brief contains
After doing this for a handful of clients now, the briefs that produce a usable result on the first or second attempt all share the same five ingredients.
- A specific emotional target, not a vague one. “Confident but never smug” beats “positive vibes.”
- A tempo range in actual BPM if you know it, or a comparison track if you don’t.
- A vocal style decision made upfront: instrumental, male vocal, female vocal, or spoken word over music.
- A length target, because a 30-second jingle needs a completely different structure to a full 3-minute brand anthem.
- One thing to avoid explicitly, stated as clearly as what you want. Tell the tool what not to sound like, not just what to sound like.
Skip any of those five and you’ll spend your credits generating twelve near-misses instead of two strong contenders.
What this costs and what it doesn’t replace
Realistic budget for a small business doing this, including a couple of hours of your own time to write a decent brief and test outputs, sits somewhere between £0 and £30 depending on which subscription tier you use and how many revision rounds you need. Compare that to a freelance composer, where a simple 30-second commercial jingle typically runs £300 to £1,500 depending on experience and usage rights, and it’s obvious why smaller brands are turning to AI first.
What it doesn’t replace is a original sonic identity built by a human composer who understands your market for the kind of campaign that needs to last a decade and become part of culture, the way certain ad jingles have. If your ambition is a five-second sting people hum without thinking, AI gets you most of the way for almost nothing. If your ambition is a piece of music that becomes inseparable from your brand the way a handful of iconic campaigns have managed, you still need a human composer at some point in that process.
Frequently asked questions
Can I legally use an AI-generated song in my ads?
Yes, if you’re on a paid plan with a commercial licence from the platform you used, such as Suno’s Pro tier or Udio’s standard subscription. Always read the specific licence terms, since free tiers usually restrict commercial use, and terms change as these companies face ongoing legal challenges.
How long does it take to get a usable brand song from AI?
In my own experience, expect one to three hours across a couple of sittings, including writing the brief, generating several batches of options, and trimming the winner. The generation itself takes under a minute per track. The time cost is in the brief and the listening, not the tool.
Will an AI song sound generic compared to a professionally composed one?
It can, particularly if your prompt uses the same vague adjectives everyone else uses. A specific, unusual brief with a real reference point and a clear thing to avoid produces far more distinctive results than a generic “upbeat and positive” prompt.
What’s the cheapest way to get a decent brand jingle right now?
A £10 monthly Suno or Udio subscription, used to generate and test a dozen or so versions before picking one, is the cheapest reliable route in 2026. It’s a fraction of the cost of hiring a composer for a short commercial jingle.
