What Lyria 3 is good at — and what it's not

Lyria 3 is Google's prompt-driven music model: describe the style, mood, and instrumentation, and it composes a track to match. Two controls set it apart in the Lyria line — negative prompts, to specify instruments, moods, or elements to avoid, and image conditioning, where an optional image influences the music's mood and atmosphere. Together they give more direction than a prompt alone, which helps land a specific feel for background scores and content soundtracks.

Pricing is about 6 credits per generated track, so iterating on prompts to find the right mood is inexpensive.

Where it sits in the Lyria line: Lyria 3 Pro is the higher-end tier; Lyria2 is the prior generation. For lyrics-first songs with vocals on your own words, ACE-Step and Minimax Music V2.6 are the tools instead — Lyria 3 is prompt-driven and doesn't take a separate lyrics field. For non-musical sound, use Sound Effects V2.

A reasonable mental model: default to Lyria 3 for prompt- and image-directed instrumental music and scores, step up to Lyria 3 Pro for higher-end quality, or switch to ACE-Step / Minimax Music for songs built around lyrics.