Songbrain on Product Hunt — Why We Built a Virality Engine for Indie Artists
May 26, 2026 · 6 min read
Yesterday we put Songbrain on Product Hunt. A year of closed beta — a few hundred artists, a handful of labels, 14 worker containers running every analysis stage on real catalogues — and the public version is out.
If you're landing here from PH: welcome. This post is the short version of what Songbrain is, why we built it, and what shipped on day one. If you've already signed up — the OG window is still open today, and you're in it.
The problem we kept hitting
Every indie artist we talked to had the same loop. Finish a song. Pick what feels like the best 15 seconds for the Reel. Post it. Watch it die. Re-clip. Re-post. Die again. No feedback from the algorithm, no signal from the analytics, no way to tell whether the song was the problem, the clip was the problem, or the timing was the problem.
Meanwhile the tools they had access to either looked backwards (charts, historical stream data) or charged for things that should be free (paid playlist pitch, "playlist plugger" scams). Nothing was looking at their unreleased song against what's viral in their subgenre this week and telling them, sec-by-sec, where the leverage was.
What we shipped on day one
A 0–100 score for every track, built from 10 specialist models — tempo, key, loudness, hook placement, lyric impact, instrumentation, semantic content — cross-referenced against viral TikToks scraped this week in your exact subgenre.
Sec-precise timestamps for the strongest parts of your song — with a one-line explanation per moment. The 15 seconds you actually want to clip for Reels, not the 15 you'd guess.
Paste a TikTok or Reel link. Songbrain cross-references the visuals, engagement, comments and the underlying audio against your song's analysis — and tells you concretely why it underperformed and what to change.
Score high on Virality, auto-qualify for one of 37 curated subgenre playlists. No submission fees, no playlist plugger middlemen, no pay-to-play.
Weekly scrape of viral short-form clips per subgenre — indexed to the exact second of the song people clip. The audio fingerprint of what's working right now, not last quarter.
Sign up before the window closes: 500 credits, 100/month forever, lifetime OG badge, highest leaderboard tie-break priority, Reel Reverse-Engineering access.
Why a launch matters more than a waitlist
The boring play would have been: collect emails, drip launch over six months, charge from day one. We did the opposite. Public Product Hunt launch, free tier with 500 signup credits, OG window still open for everyone arriving today — 100 cr/month refilled forever, lifetime badge, leaderboard tie-break priority.
The reason is simple. The product is only as good as the catalogue it's seen, the trend database is only useful at scale, and the curated Spotify routing only works if there are enough songs scoring high to fill the playlists. Every artist who uploads this week makes the next analysis sharper for the artist who uploads next week.
What we're watching this week
- Virality Score calibration— does the score hold up across genres we haven't seen much of yet? (Looking specifically at country, classical, jazz, blues.)
- Reel Reverse-Engineering quality — is the feedback specific enough to be actionable, or does it slip into generic advice on edge-case clips?
- Playlist routing accuracy — when a song qualifies for a subgenre playlist, does it actually fit the vibe of the playlist as curated, or just the genre tag?
- Trend database freshness — the scrape cadence is weekly per subgenre; we want to know which subgenres need it tighter.
How you can help
Three things move the needle in the first 48 hours of a PH launch, in order of leverage:
- Upvote and leave a comment on the Product Hunt page. PH ranks by velocity, and honest comments — even critical ones — pull more eyeballs than upvotes alone.
- Run a song through itand tell us what surprised you. The free tier covers 25 analyses; that's plenty to stress-test it.
- Forward it to one artistwho's stuck on the Reel-doesn't-pop loop. One specific person beats a generic share every time.
FAQ
Where do I find Songbrain on Product Hunt?
Right here: producthunt.com/products/songbrain — upvotes and honest reviews from artists who've actually used the tool are the single biggest thing helping us reach more makers this week.
Is Songbrain free?
Yes, to start. Every account gets 500 signup credits — enough for 25 full song analyses. OG accounts (today's window) also get 100 credits/month refilled forever. Premium ($19/mo or $180/yr) unlocks 1000 cr/month, Viral Kit PDF, album uploads and priority queue.
How is this different from Soundcharts, Chartmetric or Submithub?
Those tools tell you what already won — charts, streams, historical playlist data. Songbrain analyzes your unreleased song against what's working in your subgenre this week, points at the exact second worth clipping, and routes you onto playlists automatically based on the audio — not on your follower count or your wallet.
Can I use it on a song I haven't released yet?
That's the primary use case. Upload a private file, get the full analysis, decide what to fix before release. Original audio is kept 24h then deleted; the analysis JSON stays forever (Free preview-MP3: 30 days; Premium: 365 days).
Who's behind this?
Built by Leon Ulicnik (solo dev, indie artist background) — a year in closed beta with a few hundred artists pressure-testing every edge case before public launch. See /about for the longer version.
We're live right now.
Find Songbrain on Product Hunt, or jump straight in with 500 free credits.