ElevenLabs Music v2.5 genre strengths and how to test them

Music Business Worldwide reports that ElevenLabs calls v2.5 strongest on vocal-led and acoustic-heavy genres: R&B, soul, hip-hop, rock, metal, orchestral and cinematic. It also reports that v2.5 was preferred across 47,885 prompt pairs. That is ElevenLabs's own figure; the only reliable test for your genre is a short A/B of your own.

What was reported

A three-brief test

Write one brief per genre you ship, using the seven axes the Sume docs use: emotion, genre, tempo in BPM, key, instruments, arc and era. Give the same brief to every engine, then listen blind.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/music-router/generate \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: genre-test-orchestral" \
  -d '{
    "model": "sume/music-auto",
    "prompt": "Cinematic orchestral, 72 BPM, A minor. Strings and French horn, a piano motif at 0:15, building to a full-orchestra peak. Era: modern film score. Instrumental."
  }'

Cost of the test

On Sume's Music Router a generation is $0.125, so three genre briefs cost 3 x $0.125 = $0.375. At ElevenLabs's $0.15 per minute list price for the Music API, a one-minute track is $0.15 each.

Reading results

• Judge vocal tracks and instrumentals separately.
• Do not trust a BPM claim in provider lyrics output; count it yourself.
• Keep the brief fixed and change only the engine.