At the end of September we started building a studio. Not a room with microphones: a production pipeline where AI agents write songs, design characters, storyboard scenes and cut music videos, and one person decides what is good enough to keep. Eighteen days later it had made 2,754 generations.
What the Studio makes
Original songs, consistent AI characters and music videos, first for our own products: Aiva, Sdeal, FM.video and others. So far that has meant character portraits for Aiva and for Hunter (Sdeal's mascot), songs and video cuts for Aiva and FM.video, and imagery for a coffee marketplace.
How it works
Every piece goes through the same ten steps:
- A brief: what it is for and who will see it
- The song, written from a style and lyric sheet
- Timing: every word placed, pronunciation checked
- The character, kept consistent from shot to shot
- Shots: a storyboard turned into keyframes
- Base footage, with lip-sync checked
- Overlays: lyrics, titles and motion graphics
- Assembly, cut to the beat
- Review by Tim: approve, later or reject
- Ship, only after approval
A studio agent runs the pipeline, and Tim steers it from a control panel with tabs for songs, voices, characters and jobs. Output lands in a private review site, newest first, with a seven-day inbox of things waiting for a decision.
The numbers
- 2,754 logged generations between 28 September and 15 October 2026
- About US$119 in estimated pay-per-use spend over that time, because most work runs on flat-rate plans
- 56 songs in progress and 123 recorded takes
- A set of 68 character images for about US$9
- 173 code commits building the pipeline itself
The rules
Nothing is published without Tim's approval. Characters are labelled as AI, never passed off as people. No real artist is named in a prompt. And the agent has to ask before any job over US$50 or any day over US$100. Cheap generation makes discipline more important, not less.
Why a web agency built a studio
Because video is where attention is, and most small businesses cannot afford to make it. The same approach that lets one engineer build websites at our published prices can make branded songs, characters and short videos for a fraction of a production company's quote. It is not open to clients yet. When it is, you will read about it here first.