Issue #31: Google just made custom music free. Here's what small businesses should actually use it for.

You describe the music. Gemini writes it, records it, and hands you an MP3. Up to three minutes long. Free. Available right now on the web and your phone.

That's the actual product. Not a concept. Not a beta. Not a premium feature.

Google made Lyria 3.5, their best music generation model available inside the Gemini app on September 4, 2026, globally, for free.

For small businesses producing any kind of video content, podcasts, social media clips, or marketing materials, this changes one specific line item in your content budget.

Lyria is Google DeepMind's music generation model family. Version 3.5: the best yet, launched first in Google Flow Music on July 29, 2026, then expanded to the full Gemini app and developer API on September 4.

That expansion is what matters: a specialist tool that producers had to seek out became a default option in a chat box that over a billion people already use.

Here's what it actually does:

Text-to-music in seconds. Describe what you want in plain English, genre, mood, tempo, instruments, whether you want vocals or instrumental and Lyria 3.5 generates a finished track. "Upbeat acoustic guitar background music for a product demo video, no vocals, 90 seconds" produces exactly that.

Vocal or instrumental. Choose between tracks with AI-generated singing or pure instrumental. Vocal tracks follow your lyric prompts. Instrumental tracks respond to mood, genre, and instrument descriptions.

Genre and style control. Select or describe your genre: pop, jazz, lo-fi, cinematic, country, electronic, classical, and combinations. You can also describe style without naming a genre: "warm and nostalgic, like a Sunday morning coffee shop."

Templates for common use cases. Google built in starting templates for the use cases most businesses actually have: background music for videos, brand jingles, podcast intros and outros, and custom ringtones.

Up to three minutes per track. Long enough for most content formats, a product video, a podcast intro, a social reel, a promotional clip.

MP3 download or MP4 with cover art. Tracks download as MP3 audio files directly, or as MP4 video files with cover art if you want to post directly to social.

SynthID watermarking — every track carries an inaudible AI-generated watermark identifying it as machine-made. This is Google's implementation of the EU AI Act's content labelling requirement. You don't see or hear the watermark. Detection tools can identify it.

One honest caveat on licensing: Google has not published explicit commercial licensing terms for Lyria 3.5 output in the consumer Gemini app.

This is the detail that matters before you put a Lyria track in a paid advertisement or a commercially distributed product.

Google's general Gemini terms allow you to use output for personal and business purposes but explicit commercial music licensing terms for Lyria specifically were not published alongside the September 4 launch.

Use for internal content, social media, and non-paid distribution is unambiguously fine.

For paid advertising placement (TV, radio, paid social), confirm the licensing position before committing.

The verdict: For the specific use cases small businesses have most often backing tracks for social media videos, podcast intros and outros, background music for demo reels, in-store audio: Lyria 3.5 is excellent and genuinely free.

It replaces a recurring cost (stock music subscriptions, freelance musician fees for simple tracks) with zero cost and infinite variety.

The commercial licensing caveat is the one thing to resolve before using it in paid ad placements.

A real estate agent in Phoenix was paying $29/month for Musicbed: a stock music licensing platform primarily for background tracks on property walkthrough videos posted to Instagram and YouTube.

She used approximately 4–6 tracks per month from a library of thousands.

After Lyria 3.5 launched in Gemini, she spent 20 minutes testing it. Her workflow: she types a one-sentence description of the property type and the mood she wants: "warm, optimistic piano background for a family home in a quiet suburb, no vocals, 60 seconds" and Gemini generates a custom track in under 30 seconds.

Each track is unique to her video rather than a licensed stock piece another agent might also use.

She cancelled her Musicbed subscription the same week. Annual saving: $348. Time per track: 30 seconds instead of 5 minutes of browsing the stock library.

One note from her experience: Lyria occasionally produces tracks with a slightly mechanical quality in the mid-section.

Her fix: describe more specifically: "maintain a consistent warm acoustic guitar tone throughout, avoid percussion" and regenerate. Takes two attempts at most.

This is the fastest setup in this newsletter. You need a Google account. That's it.

"Is this music actually good enough to use, or does it sound obviously AI-generated?"

Better than you'd expect, with one condition: the more specific your prompt, the better the output.

Generic prompts produce generic-sounding music.

Specific prompts like naming the exact mood, the instruments you want, the tempo, what you want it to do at the start versus the end, produce tracks that genuinely work as professional background music.

The specific weakness is consistency in longer tracks: Lyria 3.5 occasionally drifts in mood or energy around the 90-second mark.

The fix is to generate shorter tracks and loop or cross-fade if you need more length.

For the use case most small businesses have 15 to 90 seconds of background music behind video content, the quality is more than sufficient and often indistinguishable from mid-tier stock library music.

Nobody listening to your product demo or property walkthrough is analysing the background track. They just need it to not be distracting.

The honest position on stock music subscriptions: For businesses whose primary use is social media video backing tracks and podcast intros, Lyria 3.5 is a genuine replacement for entry-level stock music subscriptions at zero cost.

For businesses that need explicit commercial licensing for paid ad placements and broadcast, Musicbed or Artlist still makes sense, their licensing terms are explicit and legally documented in a way Lyria's currently aren't for commercial use.

This week: open Gemini, describe a background track for the next piece of video content you're planning to produce, and generate it. It takes 90 seconds. Compare it to what you'd pull from your stock library or what you'd otherwise leave as awkward silence.

That comparison is the only evaluation you need. If it works for your use case and for most social media content it will, you've just eliminated a recurring cost.

Lyria 3.5's September 4 expansion from Flow Music to the full Gemini app is part of a pattern at Google that's been consistent all month: taking AI capabilities that existed in specialist tools and surfacing them in the general-purpose consumer interface that already has billions of users.

Docs Live (AI co-writing in Google Docs), Gemini replacing Google Assistant, Lyria in Gemini, all the same move.

The practical implication for small business owners: the AI tools you need are increasingly available inside products you already use and pay for, rather than requiring new subscriptions.

Google Workspace plus Gemini is becoming a comprehensive creative and productivity suite. The question is whether you're aware of what's already there.

Using Lyria 3.5 for a brand jingle you plan to place in paid TV, radio, or streaming audio advertisements before confirming Google's commercial licensing terms in writing.

For high-stakes commercial placements where music rights could create legal exposure, the explicit licensing documentation from Musicbed, Artlist, or a commissioned musician is worth the cost.

Lyria is excellent for the content most small businesses actually produce: social media, YouTube, podcasts, website background audio.

For paid broadcast placement, get the licensing documentation first.

Don't build a campaign around an assumption about terms that Google hasn't published explicitly.

Until next issue, Kris

The Layman's AI — The only AI updates your business actually needs.