What's New: Signup Fixed, Longer Songs, and Viking Metal

The Short Version

If you signed up in the last week of October and your free credits didn't show up, that was on us — and it's fixed. New accounts now get their 8 free credits (that's 2 full songs) every single time, no exceptions, no weird edge cases. We chased that bug down, rebuilt the signup grant so it can't silently fail, and then watched real new accounts land their credits to prove it.

That's the headline. But it's been a busy couple of weeks, so here's the rest of it, all in one place.

Every Song Is Now 3–4 Minutes

We killed the duration tiers. No more picking between a short cut and an extended version and doing mental math about what each one costs.

Every song on Toxic Sound is now a full 3–4 minutes, and every song costs 4 credits. That's it. One price, one full-length track. The old Entry Cut and Extended options are gone because they were just making things complicated for no good reason — nobody comes here to make a ringtone.

8 Free Credits When You Sign Up

This one needed saying plainly: new accounts start with 8 free credits. Two songs, on the house, before you spend a cent. That's been the intent for a while, but the signup bug meant some people never saw them. Now the grant is verified on real signups, and if it ever hiccups again, the system retries on its own instead of leaving you staring at a zero balance.

If you signed up during the rough patch and never got your credits, reach out — support will sort you out. Nobody should have to fight the signup screen to make their first song.

Viking Metal Is Live (And More Genres Are Coming)

Viking Metal just joined the genre list, built the same way we've been rolling out the rest of the catalog: in small batches, properly, instead of dumping eighty half-baked genres on you at once. If you've been waiting for war drums, chanting choirs, and riffs that sound like they were forged rather than played, your time has come.

The Nordic vocal work got a serious pass too — the options there now actually sound like what they claim to be, and the ones that were muddying up results got cut outright. When something actively makes a track worse, it doesn't get demoted to the bottom of the list. It gets removed.

The rest of the genre batches are still coming, same approach: a few at a time, done right, no filler.

Vocal Cues That Actually Explain Themselves

Here's a small change that makes a bigger difference than it sounds like: every vocal cue in the picker now comes with a plain description of what it does.

Before, you were picking from a list of words like "gravelly" or "ethereal" and basically guessing what the difference would be in the final track. Now each cue tells you what you're actually getting. Less guessing, fewer wasted credits on a voice that wasn't what you pictured, better first takes.

If you haven't looked at the vocal picker since this landed, go poke around — you might find a combination you never would have tried when the options were just mystery labels.

Credits, Expiry, and the Honest Version

Let's talk about credits straight, because vague credit rules are how platforms quietly rip people off.

Every credit on Toxic Sound now has an age. A credit older than one month gets removed; a credit younger than one month stays. That applies to all of them — subscription credits, top-up credits, goodwill credits, all of it. No exceptions buried in fine print, no "well, actually" clauses.

It also means subscription credits don't carry over anymore: a new cycle replaces the old bucket. We'd rather tell you that flat-out than let you discover it by surprise. The flip side is that the system is now consistent and checkable — your balance is your balance, and the ledger backs it up.

Top-up credits still expire one month after purchase, same as everything else. If any of that ever stops matching what you see on your account, that's a bug, and we want to hear about it.

The Toxic Showdown

The Showdown is on hold for now — submissions are closed. Thanks to everyone who entered a track. If it comes back, we will announce it here.

What's Still Coming

Card checkout is back — you can pay by card now. The genre rollout keeps going in batches. And the vocal work isn't done either — voice features are the most-requested thing in the inbox, and we're working through what's actually buildable versus what's just a demo that falls apart in real use.

None of this ships without being tested on the live site first, not just in a preview. We've learned that lesson the hard way more than once, and we'd rather be a week late than ship something that looks done and isn't.

Go Make Something

That's the update. Signup works, songs are full-length, Viking Metal is here, cues explain themselves, and the credit rules are out in the open where you can see them.

If you haven't generated anything in a while, your 8 free credits are waiting. Go make something loud.