A birthday song with their name in it.

Not a karaoke version of the traditional tune. Octa writes an original song from your description: lyrics that mention the person by name, a melody built around those words, a sung vocal in the voice you pick (female, male, or your own cloned voice), and a finished mix with cover art. Most birthday songs come out between two and three minutes long, which is long enough to feel like a gift and short enough to be played at the table.

Because the whole thing is generated from text, the details are the point. “A birthday song for Maya” gives you a generic pop song with a name in it. “A birthday song for Maya, who turns 30, runs marathons, hates surprise parties and still owns a Nokia 3310” gives you a song her friends will send each other for a week.

The name goes in the chorus. The inside jokes go in the verses. That is the whole recipe.

1. Say who it is for. Type the name the way it is pronounced. If a name is unusual, spell it phonetically in brackets (“Siobhan [shi-VAWN]”) so the vocal gets it right.
2. Add two or three real details. Age, a hobby, a running joke, the way they take their coffee. Two details make a song personal; six make it a list. Pick the ones that will get a laugh or a tear.
3. Choose the style and the voice. Their favourite genre works better than yours. Octa covers pop, rap, country, rock, R&B, lo-fi, jazz and more; pick a voice, tap create, and the song arrives in about a minute in the web studio or the Android app Birthday Songs Love Songs Wedding Songs Lullabies Diss Tracks Christmas Songs Jingles.

Copy any of these, change the names and details, and run it. Each one names the person, the occasion, the style and the mood — the four things the engine needs.

• upbeat pop birthday song for my mom Linda turning 60, warm female vocal, mentions her garden and her terrible puns, big singalong chorus with her name
• funny rap birthday song for my best friend Dev, male vocal, roasts his fantasy football team and his love of cold pizza, hook repeats “happy birthday Dev”
• gentle acoustic birthday song for my daughter Zoe turning 5, soft female voice, dinosaurs and purple everything, simple words she can sing along to
• country birthday song for my dad Frank, deep male vocal, his old pickup truck, fishing on Sundays, thirty years of the same jokes
• R&B slow jam birthday song for my boyfriend Marcus, smooth male vocal, our first date at the taco place, how he always steals my hoodie
• office birthday song for our coworker Priya, 80s synth-pop, mentions her spreadsheets and her 7 a.m. energy, chorus everyone can shout

More prompt patterns, by genre, are in the prompt guide.

If you would rather write the words yourself, paste them in and Octa will sing exactly what you wrote. A few things make them sing better:

• Use section tags: [Verse], [Chorus], [Bridge]. The chorus is where the name and the words “happy birthday” belong; put it after the first verse and again at the end.
• Keep lines between six and ten syllables. Long lines get rushed; very short ones sound like a list.
• Rhyme the name once, not four times. “Julia … peculiar” is charming; four rhymes on one name gets old before the second chorus.
• Say the age only if they like the age.

The AI lyrics guide covers the tags and the singable-line rules in more depth.

Every song gets a share link that opens a player page with the cover art — that is the easiest thing to drop into a WhatsApp group or a card. In the Android app you can also turn the song into a short video with the lyrics on screen, save it to your phone and post it on the day, or download the MP3 and play it at the party through a speaker.

Two practical tips: make the song a day early so you can listen once and regenerate if a detail came out wrong (a new run costs one credit), and if the person is the type who cries at songs, send it privately first.