- Should I pick soft pop or chillout?
- It comes down to whether you want a voice. Soft pop is a song with a real melody and lyric, right for scenes that want a little emotional company. Chillout is mostly instrumental, built on texture and groove, better when attention must not be drawn at all.
- What usually goes wrong when generating soft pop?
- The arrangement fills up. Systems tend to add drums and bass automatically, which removes the soft. Prompt "minimal or no drum kit, no more than three layers, narrow dynamic range" — far more reliable than asking for something "gentle."
- How loud should it sit as background?
- Roughly 12–15 dB under spoken dialogue. Its dynamic range is already narrow, so a small volume increase pushes it from background to foreground. In video, let it nearly disappear under narration and surface only in the gaps.
