Comparisons
Lyria 3.5 Alternative for Video Soundtracks
- Written by
- Sonilo Team
- Published
Lyria 3.5 is Google's vocal- and lyric-quality upgrade for Flow Music; Sonilo is a video-native soundtrack engine that reads your edit and matches it exactly.
Quick answer
Google shipped Lyria 3.5 inside Flow Music on July 29, 2026 — the third Lyria release in about five months, after Lyria 3 (30-second clips, February 2026) and Lyria 3 Pro (tracks up to 3 minutes, late March 2026). Lyria 3.5 doesn't extend that length ceiling; it sharpens quality across musicality, lyric adherence, and vocals, with Google specifically calling out more natural melodic structures, better prompt-following on song structure, more expressive vocal performances, and improved Japanese vocal pronunciation. It also adds a genuinely new input mode: you can upload a single image and Lyria 3.5 will generate a track that matches that image's mood and content.
That image-to-music feature is easy to misread as "video-to-music," but it isn't. It works from one static frame — there's no analysis of cuts, pacing, motion, or scene changes across a timeline. If you're scoring an actual video edit and need the music to land on your cuts and finish exactly when your clip does, Lyria 3.5 still leaves that work to you. That's the gap Sonilo is built to close: Sonilo analyzes the full video — not a single frame — and generates music or sound effects that match its pacing to an exact requested duration, from 5 seconds up to 6 minutes, longer than Lyria 3.5's 3-minute vocal cap.
Side-by-side comparison
| Dimension | Sonilo | Lyria 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Video-aware generation | Yes — analyzes the full video's pacing, motion, and scene changes, no prompt required | No — text prompt or a single static image; no timeline or scene analysis |
| Exact-duration matching | Yes — output is generated to match your requested length, no trimming or looping | No — you generate a track, then cut your edit (or the track) to fit |
| Maximum output length | Up to 6 minutes (360 seconds) | Up to 3 minutes for vocal tracks |
| Vocal & lyric quality | Instrumental-focused; not built for lead-vocal songwriting | Lyria 3.5's headline strength — improved pronunciation, emotional nuance, and lyric structure, including better Japanese vocals |
| Sound effects generation | Yes — dedicated video-to-SFX and text-to-SFX endpoints alongside music | Not part of Lyria 3.5; Flow Music is a music generator |
| Developer API / SDKs | Yes — REST API at api.sonilo.com plus Python and JS SDKs | No public developer API for Lyria 3.5 at launch; it ships as a Flow Music web/mobile feature |
| Commercial licensing | Fully licensed via Shutterstock, commercial-safe by default regardless of plan | Tied to your Flow Music/Google AI subscription tier's terms — check current terms before relying on it for paid client work |
Which one to pick
- Pick Sonilo when you're scoring an actual video edit and need the music or sound effects to land on your cuts and end exactly when the clip does, when you also need sound effects (not just music), when your track needs to run longer than 3 minutes, or when you're building the generation step into a product or pipeline via an API.
- Lyria 3.5 still makes sense when you want a standalone song with a real lead vocal and lyrics — that's not a Sonilo use case at all — or when you're starting from a single mood image or reference rather than an edited video and just want a track to react to it.
- Many creators end up using both: Flow Music/Lyria 3.5 for a vocal track when the video calls for one, Sonilo for the instrumental score-and-SFX pass on the rest of the edit, where automatic duration matching actually saves editing time.
FAQ
What's new in Lyria 3.5 vs Lyria 3 Pro?
Lyria 3.5, released July 29, 2026, is a quality refinement rather than a length upgrade over Lyria 3 Pro's 3-minute cap. Google says it improved four areas: musicality (richer, more natural melodic structures), lyrics (better adherence to prompts and song structure), vocals (more expressive delivery and clearer pronunciation, with a specific improvement to Japanese vocal quality), and creative control (easier tempo and duration adjustment, including verse/chorus/bridge pacing). It also introduces image-to-music, a new input mode not available in Lyria 3 Pro.
Does Lyria 3.5 work from video, or just images and text?
Text prompts and images, not full video. The new image-to-music feature takes a single uploaded image and generates a track that matches its visual mood — it does not analyze a video timeline for cuts, pacing, or scene changes the way Sonilo's video-to-music does. If you need the soundtrack to follow the actual motion and edit structure of a video clip, that's a video-aware generation problem Lyria 3.5 doesn't solve; it's what Sonilo is built for.
Is there a developer API for Lyria 3.5?
Not as a public, documented product at launch. Lyria 3.5 shipped inside Flow Music, Google's consumer web and mobile app, with no announced 3.5-specific developer endpoint, model ID, or pricing for programmatic access. Sonilo, by contrast, is API-first: a REST API at api.sonilo.com with Bearer auth, official Python and JS SDKs, and full documentation at platform.sonilo.com/docs, alongside the Sonilo Studio web app for non-developers.
What's the commercial licensing situation for Flow Music output?
It depends on your Google AI / Flow Music plan, not a single blanket rule. Commercial-use rights are generally tied to paid tiers, and you're still responsible for having rights to anything you upload (for the image-to-music feature, for example) and for avoiding outputs that raise IP, likeness, or sample-clearance issues. Because the terms can change and vary by tier, check Google's current Flow Music terms of service before relying on Lyria 3.5 output for paid client work. Sonilo takes a different approach: output is licensed via Shutterstock and commercial-safe by default, independent of which plan you're on.
Related Sonilo pages
- Lyria 3 Pro alternative comparison: https://sonilo.com/blog/lyria-3-pro-alternative
- API docs: https://platform.sonilo.com/docs
- Pricing: https://sonilo.com/pricing
