ElevenLabs Music API vs Soundverse API

ElevenLabs Music API

Vocals and lyrics in several languages, or forced instrumental, with length set from 3 to 600 seconds. Music API is disabled on the Free plan and pay-as-you-go needs a card.

Soundverse API

Songs with vocals, instrumentals, stems (2, 6 or 12), SFX and remix behind one endpoint. No status page, changelog or security.txt.

ElevenLabs Music API

1. Strip artist and song names from user prompts before calling, or the request breaks the Music Terms
2. Pin model_id. The API default is still music_v1
3. Set music_length_ms and force_instrumental: true for background beds. Billing is by minute of audio
4. On 429, retry system_busy with exponential backoff, but treat too_many_concurrent_requests as a plan limit and queue
5. Don't plan on the MCP server for music. Its documented tools cover agents and speech

Soundverse API

1. Always set Idempotency-Key on creates, so a retry after a 429 doesn't bill twice
2. Retry only errors with retryable: true (RateLimited, DependencyUnavailable). 401 and 403 won't fix themselves
3. Pass license explicitly. The default is 1, royalty-free, which doesn't cover sync or distribution
4. Fetch audio through GET /v1/files/{file_id}/download, then poll GET /v1/generations/{id} or open /stream for progress