Brioso — Product Definition

Brioso — Product Definition

Brioso is an audio generation platform: open-weight models (Stable Audio 3) on GPU
cloud, priced to be a trivial line item rather than a negotiated cost, producing
royalty-free output with real legal affordances (a rights-clear license, not a EULA
maze), delivered in the formats a buyer actually needs, through a studio-like UI that
works for people who don’t think in prompts.

Four product lines run on that platform today. See roadmap.md for the
engineering Iteration/Quarter plan.

The four product lines

Platform capabilities

1. Open-weight generation, GPU cloud. Stable Audio 3 via packages/inference-core’s
   SubprocessEngine, on a home GPU (macOS/Linux, apps/worker) or RunPod serverless
   (apps/runpod) — both paths asset-agnostic, both speak the same wire protocol.
2. Affordable, fixed pricing. $99 flat for a kit, $4.90 flat for a catalog track. A creator track is free (commercial use, credit
   required); a Brioso Pro subscription — not a per-track purchase, that path is retired
   (BRI-253) — is the only way to unlock the exclusive, tag-free version, plus a Pro
   subscription is also the volume-buyer path for the catalog: unlimited downloads,
   subject to a published fair-usage limit on automated or bulk retrieval (see Messaging
   constraints). Priced to remove cost as a reason to say no, not to maximize per-unit
   margin. PWYW is retired (BRI-152/153); see “Where the numbers live” below.
3. Legal affordances. Four rights-clear licenses, not two, each its own reviewable
   document: docs/track-license.md (creator, single-sale exclusivity, sold once, then
   retired), docs/catalog-license.md (catalog, non-exclusive, a stock library, the
   same track sold to any number of buyers), docs/customer-license.md (kit,
   sublicensable white-label), and docs/free-license.md (free download, commercial use
   with attribution, BRI-253). The right to modify, adapt, and create derivative works is
   now common to the three paid licenses (it used to exist only in the kit license); the
   free grant is narrower and doesn’t include it. Rendered as a real PDF
   (packages/licensing) from a document a buyer can actually read, not boilerplate.
4. Multi-format delivery. FLAC is the single master format platform-wide — lossless,
   bit-exact, ~50% of WAV in bytes. The creator and catalog flows ship FLAC + MP3 320 +
   MP3 128 (DeliveryPanel); the kit flow ships FLAC only (assemble.ts:52-58 appends
   nothing else).
5. A studio tool, not a form. The agency or creator refines the output — knobs,
   previews, regenerate — rather than filling in a wizard and waiting. This is the
   product’s moat as much as the generation itself: Suno, ElevenLabs, and Epidemic Sound
   ship generation; they don’t ship a white-label, platform-agnostic deliverable an agency
   or creator can put their name on.
6. Protected previews, a free download, shareable proposals. Previews are watermarked
   and served through a gated proxy so unpaid audio can’t leak as a clean file. The
   live creator/studio generation path’s in-app preview carries a single tag near the
   start (BRI-253), not the dense/looped placement the catalog’s offline-seeded previews
   still use for anti-rip protection. The free tier also gets one real downloadable file
   per track (a sparse, single-tag watermarked MP3 320, BRI-261, same placement as the
   preview above), so a creator session that never subscribes still ends with something
   to keep. The free grant is public and commercial: postable anywhere, monetized
   projects included, provided the required “Music by Brioso” credit line and link are
   used and the audible tag stays on the file. Subscribing to Brioso Pro replaces it with
   the exclusive, tag-free master and release from the credit requirement — the $4.90
   per-track unlock is retired (BRI-253); a Pro subscriber’s freshly generated track now
   auto-unlocks at generation completion, no separate purchase step. A link-shareable
   packages/sharing share token (no login required, matching the product’s
   forward-a-link workflow) lets a customer or agency forward a status page or single
   proposal without exposing the account’s full job history to anyone else who might
   guess the URL.
7. Provenance and QC. AudioSeal per-track forensic watermark
   (packages/inference-core/src/inference_core/watermark.py, catalog-seeding path only;
   apps/runpod/handler.py and apps/worker never call it, so Studio tracks carry no
   forensic watermark, just the audible tag below), the audible spoken “usebrioso.com” tag
   on public previews (BRI-198) and free-tier downloads (BRI-261), and the deterministic
   ffmpeg/LUFS QC
   gate (packages/inference-core/src/inference_core/qc.py, BRI-143). Note the
   watermark.py module docstring’s “every delivered tier” describes that module’s own
   call chain, not the whole platform: it’s reachable only from the catalog seeding
   scripts, so it’s accurate to say every catalog tier carries the forensic watermark,
   not every product. Extending AudioSeal into the live generation pipeline is tracked as
   a follow-up ticket under BRI-253, not yet scheduled.
8. Discovery surface. The catalog taxonomy pages are the SEO product; plus the blog
   (apps/web/src/data/blog/, rules in .agents/docs/seo/blog-authoring-rules.md) and the
   Remotion YouTube/Shorts pipeline (videos/youtube/).
9. First-session profiling. A blocking, skippable five-step /onboarding flow runs
   right after a user’s first OTP verify — free and Pro alike, gated only on
   users.onboardingCompletedAt IS NULL, not plan. It writes six columns on users
   (name, country, aiExperience, useCase, discoveryChannel,
   discoveryChannelOther) via apps/web/src/server/onboarding/onboarding-fn.ts.
   country is BRI-270’s hard dependency; discoveryChannel is the acquisition-channel
   attribution signal, otherwise unavailable since the product has no ad pixels. Every
   step is skippable and the flow itself is dismissible (“I’ll do this later”), so the
   data is directional signal from whoever chooses to answer, not a census.

Why not WAV

FLAC is bit-exact lossless, so nothing is given up for a creator or an agency — WAV is
not shipped. The one case that would reopen it: a game-engine target, because Unity has
no FLAC importer and the RIFF smpl loop chunk that carries loop points is WAV-only —
revisit if and when a game-dev vertical is scoped, not before.

Messaging constraints

Global, not agency-specific — every product line’s copy has to satisfy these:

• Say royalty free. Never copyright free / no copyright. (BRI-76 verdict; license
  §4 concedes AI audio may have limited or no copyright, so the claim is close to
  literally true and tells buyers they need no permission.)
• “No claims from us” — never an absolute “no claims” or “cleared for Content ID.”
  Platforms throw false positives against similar-sounding audio, outside Brioso’s
  control; no product line can promise no-claim. This isn’t a pure prohibition. Lead
  with what we can say instead: no one else will generate the exact same file (every
  generation is randomly seeded), and the model is trained on commercially licensed and
  Creative Commons audio, not scraped catalogs (the model provider’s published position).
  On Studio and the catalog (not the free tier or the kit), close with the remedy: if a
  claim hits authorized use and we can’t get it cleared, we refund the price paid,
  capped at that amount and stated as our entire liability, not a legal indemnity.
  Never name the model itself (BRI-253, blog.rules.test.ts).
• Price next to the promise; no “free” token in the first 100 characters.
• Never “unique” as a musical quality claim. Capability §2 concedes similar-sounding
  audio can exist elsewhere. Uniqueness of the file is fine to state, because
  generation is randomly seeded and no one else will generate that exact file: phrase it
  as “no one else will generate this file,” never “a unique track.”
• Attribution is a license condition, not a request, and only on the free tier: the
  credit line (“Music by Brioso” + link, canonical strings in
  apps/web/src/lib/studio/creditSnippets.ts) is required on every free download. No
  paid tier, on any product line, ever requires attribution. The “Powered by Stability
  AI” footer line is Brioso’s own obligation to the model provider and never flows down
  to a buyer.
• Pro’s “unlimited” catalog downloads may ship only with the concrete fair-usage caveat:
  unmetered for normal creative use, Brioso reserves the right to apply a published
  fair-usage limit to automated or bulk retrieval, any limit is published before it
  applies, and licenses already granted on tracks already downloaded stay valid
  regardless. BRI-162 lands the actual number without contradicting this.
• The pitch is “sold once, then retired” plus made-to-brief — true of the creator
  line only, false for the catalog, which is a non-exclusive stock library.
  routes/_marketing/license.tsx:24-28 already flags this; keep both lines honest about
  which promise applies to which product.
• Agency line keeps its existing do/don’t (“Audio Brand Kit,” not “AI music generator”).

Line 1: creator custom generation (live)

ICP: creators making video, podcasts, games, or any project that needs a track built
to their brief rather than picked off a shelf.

Live and shipping (/studio): a tag-based brief loop, single-sale exclusivity licensing
(docs/track-license.md), FLAC + MP3 320 + MP3 128 delivery, free-preview and
free-trial quotas ahead of unlocking. The per-track $4.90 Stripe checkout is retired
(BRI-253): every generated track gets a watermarked MP3 320 download, free, licensed for
commercial use provided the required credit line stays attached and the audible tag
stays on the file (BRI-261) — a real artifact for the free tier, not just a playable
stream. Subscribing to Brioso Pro is now the only way to unlock the exclusive, tag-free
master and release from the credit requirement; a Pro subscriber’s track auto-unlocks
at generation completion rather than requiring a separate purchase.

Line 2: royalty-free catalog (live)

What it is: a pre-generated, browsable royalty-free music library — the “Epidemic
Sound, not ElevenLabs” bet — sold as single tracks rather than commissioned per brief.

• Browse axes: genre, mood, instrument, use-case — four independent taxonomies
  (packages/catalog/src/taxonomy.ts), path-based URLs (/music/genre/...,
  /music/mood/...) rather than query params, chosen to mirror Epidemic’s URL
  architecture because real slug collisions exist across axes (e.g. “Jungle,” “Lounge”
  are both a genre and a mood) that a flatter scheme can’t disambiguate.
• Curation: 12 priority genres and 12 priority moods (packages/catalog/src/ taxonomy.ts:50,465, featured: true) pinned first in the UI — a subjective curation
  call, not search-volume-driven.
• Coverage: ~3,400 tracks is the full-coverage target across every taxonomy leaf; the
  live launch is a smaller seeded subset (seeded: true leaves only) of roughly 32
  categories, expanding per BRI-133 as demand is proven. Unseeded leaves stay noindex
  until they have both real intro copy and published tracks
  (apps/web/src/lib/catalog-seo.ts’s shouldIndexTaxonomyPage).
• License: docs/catalog-license.md — non-exclusive. The same track can be sold
  to any number of buyers, before and after any given purchase, and stays in the catalog.
  This is the one place the platform’s “sold once, then retired” pitch does not apply.
• Pricing: $4.90/track.

Source of full reasoning: docs/royalty-free-music-decisions.md.

Line 3: agency Audio Brand Kit (built, not launched)

ICP: branding and creative agencies, roughly 3–50 staff, who deliver visual identity
projects (logo, color, typography, brand guidelines) to clients and are asked — or want to
be able to offer — an audio identity as part of that engagement. Buyers, in order of
likely entry point: the founder/owner of a small branding studio, the creative director
who owns deliverable quality, the brand strategist who’d write the audio brief if it
didn’t require hiring a specialist. Explicitly not the customer: restaurants/retailers
buying audio directly, freelance composers/sound designers (a substitute, not a buyer),
or consumers looking for stock/library music.

The problem: a branding agency wins an identity engagement, ships the visual system,
and hears “can you also do our audio branding?” Today the honest answer is “we outsource
it” — to a sonic branding studio (MassiveMusic, Sixième Son, Made Music Studio, amp,
DLMDD, Antfood), which costs $5–15k and weeks of turnaround, cuts the agency out of the
delivery relationship, and risks the client going to the studio directly next time.
Brioso lets the agency say yes, keep the relationship, and deliver an Audio Brand Kit the
client believes came from the agency.

The loop:

logo + website URL  ──►  brand analysis  ──►  AUDIO STRATEGY (free)
   (required)            (vision model)       personality · emotion ·
   + optional brand                           instrumentation · tempo ·
     answers                                  texture · the "Why" paragraph
                                                      │
                                          agency edits + approves
                                                      │  $99
                                                      ▼
                                     kit generation ──► white-label ZIP
                                                        + guidelines

The Audio Strategy is this use case’s moat, not the audio itself. Agencies are
experts in brands, not audio — asking them “what BPM?” makes Brioso an AI music toy.
Instead Brioso infers a brand’s audio identity from what already exists (site, logo) and
proves it understands the brand before generating a single note. The agency edits and
approves; the approved strategy is exactly the plan Brioso generates against — one
artifact earns trust and specifies the kit.

What ships:

1. Strategy loop (free). Brand intake (logo + URL required; brand-language questions
   optional) → automated brand analysis → an editable Audio Strategy document with a
   rationale paragraph an agency would recognize as accurate.
2. Paid generation ($99). Approving a strategy fans out into per-asset generation jobs
   (sonic logo, brand theme, stingers, intro/outro, UI sounds, social pack) on the shared
   generation pipeline.
3. White-label delivery. A ZIP of FLAC masters plus Audio Brand Guidelines (Markdown)
   derived from the strategy, carrying zero Brioso branding, so the agency’s client never
   sees Brioso.

The $99 price and its risk: chosen to be a trivial line item inside a ~$6k+
engagement rather than a negotiated cost, deliberately below what a full economic
analysis might justify. Margin risk, stated openly: a kit spans multiple generated
assets plus a vision-model brand-analysis call. If true generation + inference cost per
kit exceeds roughly $25–30, the $99 price does not clear margin at the assumed
asset-plan size, and either the cost ceiling on the asset plan tightens or the price
moves. Measured cost per kit: not yet measured — populate once Milestone 2.5
(cost-per-kit instrumentation) has real data from test/design-partner kits.

Status and launch gate. The pipeline above is real end to end — intake, SSRF-guarded
capture, vision analysis, editable strategy, $99 Stripe checkout, per-asset fan-out,
white-label ZIP + guidelines delivery, all with tests — but it sits behind
ComingSoonChip on /agencies, in the header, in the footer, and on the /pricing card
while GTM focuses on the creator and catalog lines instead.

Messaging do / don’t: do say “Audio Brand Kit,” “Audio Strategy,” “white-label,”
“your client never sees Brioso,” “deliver without hiring composers or sound designers.”
Don’t say “AI music generator,” “generate songs,” “make a track” — anything that frames
the output as a novelty rather than a brand deliverable. The AI is the engine that makes
the economics work; it is never the pitch.

Not building

• A multi-tenant agency platform. Agency accounts, client-project hierarchies, and a
  dashboard are deferred until agencies have actually paid — see “Agency workspace” in
  roadmap.md.

Where the numbers live

One place to look before the next price change:

• packages/verticals/{catalog,kits}/src/*-checkout.ts — the cents actually charged,
  server-side. Creator has no per-track checkout anymore (BRI-253 retired it); its
  track-checkout.ts only guards that Stripe is configured for the flows that remain.
• apps/web/src/lib/{creator-pricing,catalog-seo}.ts — the labels shown in copy,
  tested against the checkout constants above.
• packages/billing/src/pro-price-display.ts — Pro’s price, read live from Stripe.
• .agents/reports/2026-07-31-pricing-model-decision.md — the reasoning behind all of
  it.
• packages/db/src/onboarding.ts — the onboarding enum value lists (AiExperience,
  UseCase, DiscoveryChannel) and the COUNTRIES/COUNTRY_CODES allowlist; single
  source for the schema column types, the server validator, and the route’s option
  labels.

Engineering roadmap

Feature sequencing and Iteration/Quarter mapping now live in
roadmap.md, which also tracks the underlying monorepo/infra migration
this product is built on.