QWE AI Academy You want to make a song but can’t play an instrument. You’ve got lyrics, a vibe in your head, maybe a genre – but no way to turn it into actual music. Suno AI solves this. Type a prompt, wait 60 seconds, and you’ve got a full track with vocals, drums, guitar, the works.
Most people waste half their credits before they figure out what works.
Why Most First-Timers Burn Through Credits
Suno gives you credits to generate songs. The free tier provides 50 credits per day – roughly 10 songs. Sounds generous until you realize how fast you’ll blow through them with bad prompts.
Community feedback from Reddit’s r/SunoAI shows about 70% of vague prompts require three or more regenerations. You type “sad rock song,” Suno spits out something that doesn’t match your head, you regenerate. Again. Again. Suddenly you’re out of credits and you’ve got nothing usable.
The issue: Suno needs specificity. Genre, mood, tempo, vocal style – these aren’t optional details. They’re the difference between a first-try winner and five wasted attempts.
Simple Mode: Fast Prompts, No Customization
Start at suno.com/create. Two options: Simple and Custom. Simple Mode is one text box. You describe what you want, hit Create, Suno generates two versions in about 30-60 seconds.
A working Simple Mode prompt looks like this:
"Upbeat indie pop, 120 BPM, female vocals, bright acoustic guitar, lyrics about road trips"That prompt tells Suno the genre (indie pop), energy (upbeat), tempo (120 BPM), vocal type (female), instrumentation (acoustic guitar), and theme (road trips). The AI knows what to build.
Compare that to “a song about road trips.” The second one works maybe 30% of the time. The first one works most of the time.
If you don’t know the BPM, pick a reference. “Tempo like ‘Mr. Brightside'” works. Suno can infer from context, but exact numbers are better.
Custom Mode: When You Need Control
Toggle Custom Mode when you want to paste your own lyrics or fine-tune the structure. This is where Suno gets powerful – and where most tutorials stop being helpful.
Custom Mode splits into three fields. Lyrics box: Paste your lyrics here. Use structural tags like [Verse], [Chorus], [Bridge] to tell Suno where each section starts. Style of Music field: This is your genre/mood/instrumentation descriptor. Think “melancholic folk, fingerpicked guitar, raspy male vocal.” Instrumental toggle: Turn this on if you want background music with no singing.
The mistake people make: they dump a wall of lyrics into the box with no tags. Suno guesses. Sometimes it works. Often it turns your chorus into a bridge or skips half your second verse.
Structure matters. A properly tagged lyric looks like this:
[Verse 1]
Driving down the coast, windows down
Sunset bleeding orange on the bay
[Chorus]
We don't know where we're going
But we're never turning around
[Verse 2]
Empty roads and faded signs
Your playlist on repeat all nightTags guide the AI. No tags, no guarantees.
Style Prompts That Actually Work
The Style field is where specificity pays off. Reddit users report better results when they include: primary genre (e.g., “punk rock,” “lo-fi hip hop”), tempo or energy descriptor (“fast,” “laid-back,” “90 BPM”), vocal character (“gritty male vocal,” “smooth female alto”), and key instruments (“distorted guitar,” “808 bass,” “piano-led”).
Example: “Fast punk rock, 180 BPM, shouted male vocals, distorted power chords, aggressive drums.”
Not overkill. The minimum input for consistent output.
Three Gotchas That Waste Your Generations
These are the problems nobody mentions until you’ve already hit them.
1. Style Drift on Extensions
You generate a great 30-second clip. You want to extend it to a full song. You click Extend, leave the prompt blank, and Suno changes the style halfway through. The community calls this “style drift.”
A poll from Suno’s Discord community (Q4 2025, over 5,000 members) found 62% of extended tracks deviate from the original. If your first clip was “fast punk rock,” your extension needs to say “fast punk rock” again in the prompt box. Every. Single. Time.
2. The AI Ignores Your Lyrics
Sometimes Suno just doesn’t sing what you wrote. Or it mispronounces a word. Gets stuck repeating one line. Especially common in non-English songs.
Community reports from AI music forums show pronunciation errors, robotic vocal artifacts, and lyric repetition as frequent issues. The fix: simplify your lyrics. Shorter lines. Common words. If Suno keeps mangling a phrase, rewrite it.
3. Credit Confusion
Free plan: 50 credits per day. 10 songs daily, resetting at midnight UTC. Not 50 per month. Many users think they’ve got a monthly budget and wonder why their credits disappear overnight.
Paid plans work differently (as of February 2026). Pro ($10/month) gives 2,500 credits per month. Premier ($30/month) gives 10,000. Those credits don’t roll over. Use them or lose them. Top-up credits don’t expire, but they require an active subscription to spend – cancel your plan and your top-ups are frozen until you resubscribe.
What You Can’t Do (Yet)
Suno outputs one mixed audio file. You get the whole song: vocals, drums, bass, guitar, all baked together. You can’t isolate the vocal track or adjust the guitar volume after generation.
Stem separation – where you export individual instrument tracks – is available, but only on the Premier plan through Suno Studio as of 2026. Free and Pro users get the full mix or nothing. Limitation if you want to remix or edit in a DAW. Reddit users praise Suno’s competitor Udio for offering stem downloads on all plans, though Udio has its own vocal quality issues.
A Real Example
Say you want a moody electronic track about late-night drives. Bad prompt: “electronic song about driving at night.” Probably gives you generic EDM.
Style: "Downtempo synthwave, 85 BPM, breathy female vocal, analog synths, reverb-heavy drums"
Lyrics:
[Verse 1]
Neon signs blur past my window
City lights fade into black
Radio hum, no destination
Just the road and me looking back
[Chorus]
Midnight drive, nobody waiting
Engine hum fills the empty space
No map, no plan, just moving forward
Chasing ghosts I can't eraseThat prompt works because it specifies tempo, mood, vocal type, and instrumentation. The lyrics are tagged. Suno knows what to build.
First generation? Maybe 70% there. Regenerate once with a tweak (“add more reverb” or “slower tempo”) and you’re done.
Who’s Actually Using This
As of August 2026, Suno has over 2.4 million monthly active users – double the 1.2 million from early 2024. TikTok creators use it for custom background tracks. Podcasters generate intro jingles. Indie musicians sketch song ideas before taking them into a studio.
Not replacing professional producers. But for fast prototypes, YouTube content, or personal projects? Absurdly useful. Reddit users describe it as a “sketchpad” – a way to hear an idea before investing real studio time.
Some creators have released Suno-generated tracks on Spotify and gotten traction. The quality ceiling is high enough that casual listeners can’t always tell it’s AI.
Next Step
Sign up for the free tier. Generate five songs. Pay attention to which prompts work and which don’t. When you find a style that clicks, save that prompt structure – you’ll reuse it.
Most people quit after two bad generations. Suno rewards iteration, not guessing.
FAQ
Can I use Suno songs commercially?
Only if you’re on a paid plan. Free tier songs are non-commercial only. Pro and Premier plans grant commercial rights for any song created while your subscription is active. If you cancel, you lose commercial rights to songs made after cancellation – but songs created during an active paid period remain yours to use commercially.
How long does it take to generate a song?
30 to 60 seconds. Peak usage (evenings, weekends) can stretch it to 90.
What if the AI keeps getting my lyrics wrong?
Simplify your phrasing. Use common words. Avoid complex rhyme schemes in the first draft. If a specific word keeps getting mispronounced, swap it for a synonym. Suno doesn’t have a pronunciation dictionary – it guesses phonetics, and sometimes it guesses wrong. Community workarounds include rewriting problem lines or using the “Make Random Lyrics” feature to let the AI write around your theme instead.