Suno v5.5 made our podcast intro. Here is exactly what we prompted.

We needed a 15-second intro jingle for a weekly tech podcast. The brief was simple: upbeat, electronic, recognisable after two listens, and not longer than 15 seconds. We had a budget for a freelance composer but wanted to try Suno v5.5 first to see if it could handle something this specific.

It took nine generations and two complete prompt rewrites. Here is every prompt we tried and what came back.

Attempt 1: too vague

CopyUpbeat electronic podcast intro, 15 seconds, modern tech vibe

Suno generated a 30-second track with vocals. We wanted instrumental only. The track was also generic background music, not a distinct jingle. Usable as hold music, not as a podcast identity.

Attempt 2: more specific, still wrong

CopyInstrumental electronic jingle, 15 seconds exactly, no vocals,
synth melody with a clear hook, upbeat 120 BPM, podcast intro style

Better. No vocals this time. But "15 seconds exactly" produced a 22-second track. Suno v5.5 is better at duration targeting than v4 was, but it still overshoots on short clips. The melody was also four bars of the same phrase repeated, with no build or resolution. It sounded like a loop, not an intro.

Attempt 3: describing the structure

CopyInstrumental electronic jingle, 12-16 seconds, no vocals, no lyrics.
Structure: 2-beat silence, then a rising synth arpeggio for 4 bars,
then a punchy drop with a memorable 4-note hook, then fade out.
Clean production, minimal reverb. 125 BPM.

This was the turning point. Describing the structure rather than the vibe gave Suno something concrete to work with. Generation 5 (third try with this prompt) produced a track we genuinely liked. The arpeggio worked, the four-note hook was catchy, and the total length was 17 seconds.

Attempts 4-9: variations and refinement

We used Suno Studio's "extend" feature to generate three variations of the generation 5 track, adjusting the ending. One variation had a cleaner fade. We picked that one.

We also tried the same prompt with the "Suno v5.5 Instrument" mode rather than the default "Song" mode. Instrument mode was more consistent for our use case because it never tried to add vocals, even when the prompt was ambiguous.

Editing in Descript

The raw Suno output was 17 seconds. We needed 15. We imported it into Descript and trimmed the silence at the start and tightened the fade at the end. Descript's waveform view made this a 2-minute job.

We also normalised the loudness to -16 LUFS (the standard for podcast audio) because Suno's default output is louder than most podcast hosting platforms expect. Descript handles this with a single click in the audio effects panel.

What we learned

Be structural, not vibes-based. "Upbeat electronic" gives Suno too much freedom. "Rising arpeggio for 4 bars, then a 4-note hook, then fade" gives it a plan. Suno v5.5 follows structural prompts much better than mood-based ones.

Overshoot the generation count. We set out to generate one track and ended up needing nine. Budget your time for iteration. The Pro plan at $10/month gives you 500 generations per month, which is more than enough for this kind of project.

Suno still cannot do precise timing. If you need exactly 15.0 seconds, you will need to trim in a DAW or in Descript. Suno gets close but not exact.

The v5.5 Studio multitrack editor is useful for jingles. You can extend, remix, and layer tracks without leaving Suno. For a simple podcast intro this was not necessary, but for longer pieces (a 60-second ad break bed, a show outro with a musical callback to the intro), Studio would save a trip to an external editor.

Would we use Suno again?

For podcast intros, interstitials, and background beds: yes. The quality of v5.5 instrumental output is good enough for podcast use and the iteration cycle is fast. For anything where a client is paying for bespoke music composition, no. Suno's output sounds like Suno's output, and a musician will spot it. For internal podcast work where the bar is "distinctive and not annoying", it clears that bar with room to spare.

Total time: about 45 minutes from first prompt to final trimmed file. Total cost: $10 for the monthly Pro subscription. A freelance composer would have charged £100-200 and taken 3-5 days, but would have produced something custom that we fully own the composition rights to. Suno Pro grants commercial usage rights, but the underlying model was trained on copyrighted music and the legal status of that is unsettled.