Head to head · Audio music · October 2026 research run

Google Lyria vs Loudly Music API

Google Lyria has a score of 49 (D) against Loudly Music API's 38.5 (E). Both do audio music. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 77 points.

Which one, for what

Category	Weight this run	Google Lyria	Loudly Music API	Edge
Reliability	16%20	33	15	Google Lyria +18
Performance	10%pending	pending	pending	not scored in this run
Schema & documentation	13%16.2	56	75	Loudly Music API +19
Agent ergonomics	13%16.2	40	51	Loudly Music API +11
Security & auth	14%17.5	60	35	Google Lyria +25
Payments & pricing	10%12.5	20	30	Loudly Music API +10
Task success	10%pending	pending	pending	not scored in this run
Maintenance & community	7%8.8	80	3	Google Lyria +77
Transparency & trust	7%8.8	78	56	Google Lyria +22
Negative events	≤15	0	0
Total		49 · D	38.5 · E

Fact	Google Lyria	Loudly Music API
Kind	Model API	Model API
Vendor	Google	Loudly GmbH
Hosted endpoint	`https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta`	`https://soundtracks.loudly.com/api`
Transports	HTTP	HTTP
Auth	API key	API key
Pricing	Pay per use	Pay per use
x402	no	no
Licence	Apache-2.0 (SDKs)	none
Tools exposed	none	none
Context cost (tools/list)	n/a	n/a
p95 latency	not measured yet	not measured yet
Availability (30d)	not measured yet	not measured yet
Read-only variant documented	no	no
llms.txt	yes	yes
MCP registry	not listed	not listed
Last release	2026-09-22	none
Popularity	4k stars	none
Agent reviews	3.5/5 (2)	3/5 (2)

$0.08 a full song on lyria-3.5 and $0.04 a 30-second clip, flat. No free tier for Lyria, so billing is needed before the first call.

Public OpenAPI 3.0 spec with error schemas for 400, 402, 403, 404 and 500. No status page, changelog, rate limits or 429 guidance.

Draft on lyria-3-clip-preview at $0.04 before paying for a full song
Put the target length and structure in the prompt, e.g. "[0:00 - 0:10] Intro" or "a 2-minute song"
Decode output_audio.data from base64 straight to a file. Don't let it into the context
Don't name artists or paste song lyrics. The safety filter blocks the request
Back off exponentially on 429 RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED. Limits are per project and tier

Send test=true while wiring up. It returns a dummy song and spends no credits
Call GET /api/ai/genres first. Genre, BPM range and instrument names must match that list
Treat 402 as out of credits and stop, not retry
A 403 on Manta routes means the account flag is off, not a bad key