Six months ago I was making TikTok content and music videos. Every time I needed synced lyrics, I'd spend 2–3 hours on the same painful process: copy the lyrics from Suno, open my video editor, manually set a timestamp for every single line, export as SRT, realise half the timings were off, do it again.

It was genuinely awful. So I built something to fix it.

Then I forgot about it entirely.

The Problem

If you've ever made a lyric video or added subtitles to a music video, you know the drill. You need a subtitle file — SRT, LRC, or VTT — with precise timestamps for every line. Getting those timestamps manually means listening to the song, pausing, typing a time, listening again, adjusting, repeating. For a three-minute song it takes two to three hours minimum.

AI music tools like Suno and Udio made this worse in a specific way: they give you an audio file and nothing else. There's no lyrics export, no timestamp data, nothing. And you can't just use your original prompt as subtitles — the AI interprets lyrics creatively, adds ad-libs, changes phrasing, stretches words. What comes out of the speakers is often quite different from what you typed in.

So the only option was to do it manually. Every. Single. Time.

What I Built

I'm a developer, so my instinct was to automate the thing that was eating my time. I built LyricTime — you upload an audio file, AI transcribes the vocals with precise timestamps, and you download a properly formatted subtitle file. The whole thing takes about 30 seconds instead of 2–3 hours.

The transcription accuracy lands around 95% for most songs — you might need to fix the odd word, but the timestamps are solid. No more timing every line by hand.

I deployed it. Then I got distracted by a new idea and completely forgot it existed.

The Part I'm Still a Bit Embarrassed About

About three months later, I logged in to cancel one of my own test subscriptions — I'd been paying myself $3/month as part of testing the payment flow and wanted to stop.

That's when I noticed it.

Four other people had found the app, signed up, and paid for it. Real money, real people. On a product that was completely broken. I don't even know how they found it — I hadn't told anyone about it, hadn't posted anywhere, hadn't done any marketing. They must have stumbled across it somehow.

I felt terrible. I refunded all four of them immediately and spent the next week fixing everything that was broken. Then I started actually working on it properly.

If you're one of those four original users: I'm sorry, and thank you for the accidental product validation.

What's Happened Since

That was the wake-up call that made me take it seriously. Since then:

• Added a free preview (no credit card required) — conversion went up 300% after this one change
• Improved accuracy and added support for all three major subtitle formats: LRC, SRT, and VTT
• Built out a proper editor so users can fix the odd word that gets transcribed wrong
• Now processing hundreds of songs every month

The users broke down in a way I didn't expect. I thought it would mostly be musicians. It's actually:

• Suno and Udio creators making lyric videos for their AI-generated songs
• TikTok creators who need lyrics on screen for content
• Musicians adding lyrics to their Spotify local file releases
• Karaoke enthusiasts building their own karaoke libraries

What I Actually Learned

A few things that changed how I think about building products:

Free previews matter more than I expected. Letting people try before they pay — no credit card, no signup friction — was the single biggest conversion lever. 300% is not a typo.

Accuracy beats speed. I spent a lot of time making the transcription faster. Turns out users will happily wait 30 seconds for 95% accuracy. What they won't accept is fast but wrong. Getting the timing right matters more than getting it done quickly.

Format support isn't optional. I launched with SRT only. Immediately had users asking for LRC (music players) and VTT (web video). Different use cases genuinely need different formats. You can't pick one and call it done.

Ignoring a product for three months is a terrible strategy. Obviously. But also — the fact that people found it and paid for it despite it being broken and unmarketed told me there was real demand. Sometimes the market finds you before you find it.

If you make music videos, TikTok content, or AI-generated songs and you're still timing lyrics by hand, you don't have to be. Upload your audio to LyricTime, get your subtitle file, done.

Free to try — no credit card required. Pay-as-you-go at $3 for 30 minutes of audio.