Hitou

Hitou writes and produces a song about one particular person, so you can give it to them.

You start by choosing the occasion - a birthday, an anniversary, a wedding, a thank-you, or nothing in particular - and saying who the song is for: a wife, a father, a best friend, a grandmother. Then you pick a musical style and a mood, choose the singer's voice, and tell the story: the joke you have repeated for years, the habit you tease them about, the evening you both keep coming back to. Specific details are what make the recipient hear themselves in the result.

Roughly a minute later a finished, studio-quality track comes back, with original lyrics built from what you wrote. The preview costs nothing. You listen before deciding, and pay only if the song lands - from $29, with no account and no subscription. Everything happens in the browser.

Every song arrives in two versions, so you can keep the take you prefer. Each one lives on its own gift page, where you can add a written note and a short video message, which turns handing it over into sending a link.

Against commissioning a musician, the trade is time and money: minutes rather than a week, at a fraction of the price. Against a general-purpose music generator, the difference is intent - Hitou is built for giving, so the questions it asks are the ones that make a person recognize themselves, down to getting every he and she right.