A vague brief produces a vague song. The difference between a lyric that feels personal and one that feels like it could apply to anyone almost always traces back to what you asked the customer before you started writing. Get the questions right, and generation becomes much closer to a first draft you're refining. Get them wrong, and you're guessing — or worse, going back to the customer mid-order for details that should have been collected upfront.
The fields that do the most work
Recipient name and who it's from. Obvious, but worth stating explicitly as two separate fields rather than one — "who is this for" and "who is this from" are different pieces of information, and conflating them is a common source of confusion in the generated lyric.
Occasion. Birthday, anniversary, wedding, proposal, memorial, graduation, "just because." This single field does more to steer tone than almost anything else you'll collect.
Relationship. Spouse, parent, friend, sibling. The right emotional register for a song to a spouse is different from one to a childhood friend, and without this field you'll default to a generic "romantic" or "sentimental" tone that may not fit.
The specific story or memory. This is the field sellers most often make too short or too optional. A textarea prompting for "2-3 specific details or memories" — an inside joke, a place, a shared moment — is what makes a lyric feel written for one person instead of assembled from a template. Generic answers here produce generic songs; there's no way around it.
Music style and vocal preference. Acoustic, pop, country, R&B, folk, cinematic — whatever styles you're comfortable generating in. Vocal preference (male voice, female voice, no preference) matters enough to ask directly rather than assume.
Must-include words or phrases (optional). Some customers have a specific line, nickname, or phrase they want in the song verbatim. Making this its own field means you catch it before generating rather than after a customer points out it's missing from the "final" version.
Questions worth adding for specific niches
Memorial and tribute songs benefit from a gentler framing — "tell us about them" rather than "tell us their story," and more space for open-ended reflection than a structured occasion checkbox. Wedding and proposal songs benefit from a timeline field (the event date) since these tend to be time-sensitive in a way birthday orders often aren't.
Common mistakes
Making the story field optional. It's tempting to keep the form short, but the story/memory field is the one place where skipping it costs you the most in output quality. If a customer leaves it blank, you'll either generate something generic or have to follow up anyway — which defeats the purpose of collecting everything upfront.
Using field names the customer doesn't recognize. "Tone" means something different to you than it does to a customer who has never thought about music production. Options like "Upbeat / Heartfelt / Playful / Emotional" read more clearly than an open text field asking for "desired tone."
Not previewing what happens after submission. Customers fill out forms more completely when they understand what happens next — a line like "we'll generate your first draft within 2 business days" at the top of the form sets expectations and tends to reduce abandoned submissions.
