What is a Ditty?
A Ditty is a personalized song and matching e-card, created for someone special in your life and delivered to them in just a few minutes.
What you get for your money
- A complete personalized song — made just for them including their name, not a jingle over a template
- Your choice of style and singer — you pick the style of music and the voice before it is made
- A beautiful unique e-card you can edit — change the picture, the words, the fonts
- Choice of envelope and animated player — retro vinyl, cassette or reel-to-reel tape
- Printable keepsakes — a gold disc complete with lyrics and a scannable player
- The MP3 to download and keep for good
- A license to play it at your party (just give the DJ the MP3)
Three lengths, and length is the only thing that changes: $9 for about a minute, $29 for a full song, $49 for the longest version with more re-records and a sign-off from you by name. See what each one includes.
You hear the first verse and chorus before you pay anything.
How you make your Ditty
You answer four questions about someone special. A few minutes later there is a song about them, sung out loud, inside a card you can change. Here is every step, photographed from the real thing.
Answer four questions
Their first name, the occasion, your relationship, and what they are actually like. That last one is the whole product: the habits, the sayings, the thing they will not throw away. There is a helper button if you get stuck, and you can tell us how an unusual name is pronounced so the singer gets it right.
Click any picture to see it full size
Pick how it should sound
Sixty-two styles, from folk to drum and bass. Hover one to hear a taste of it. If nothing fits, describe the sound in your own words, or choose Surprise me and let the writer pick a style that suits the person you have described.
Hear the opening, free
The first verse and chorus of your song, sung, usually within a minute of asking. Not a demo of somebody else’s. You read the lyrics as they play, and the three lengths sit underneath with what each one adds. Only then do you decide.
Change it until it is right
Bought it and something is off? Edit the lyrics yourself and save them. Ask for another take of the same lyrics if it is the performance you want changed, or have new lyrics written from your answers. You can change the musical style too.
Change the card yourself
The card is drawn for you, and then it is yours. Write your own message on it, move it, change the type, add stickers, swap the border, or pick a different design from the gallery of 15,422. Everything you see here updates the card live as you go.
They get an envelope
Send the link by email or message, or hand over your phone. What they see first is a sealed envelope with their name on it, in whichever of the five card styles you chose. Nothing plays until they open it, which is the moment worth waiting for.
And then they hear it
The card opens and the song plays, with the lyrics following along underneath. They can scrub back, play it again, download the MP3, print a keepsake, or leave it running as a screensaver. The link does not expire.
The player is a choice too: a spinning record, a cassette, a reel to reel, a jukebox, or a plain one that gets out of the way. You pick the envelope it arrives in as well.
Every picture above is one real card. Open Jimmy's and play it yourself Opens in a new tab, so you keep your place here.
Write their song →From $9. You hear the opening before you pay. See what each length includes.
While you are making it
- What if something goes wrong while it is being made?
- It gets made again, at no charge. If a recording fails or comes back broken we re-run it — you do not pay twice for one song, and you do not have to argue about it.
- Can I change my answers before I pay?
- Yes. Nothing is fixed until you pay, so you can go back, change what you said about them, and have the words written again from the new answers.
- What if I close the tab halfway through?
- Your answers are kept. Come back to the same link and it picks up where you left it — you do not have to start again.
- Do I have to send it straight away?
- No. It sits on your order page until you are ready, and you can schedule it to arrive on a date instead of sending it now.
- How many questions do I actually have to answer?
- Four to get started: who it is for, what the occasion is, what they are like, and how it should sound. Everything after that is optional detail, and the more of it you give the less generic the song is.
- What if I cannot think of anything to say about them?
- Small and specific beats big and general. "Always loses her keys" or "makes tea nobody asked for" will do more than "kind and funny", because the second one could be anybody. Three tiny details are plenty.
- Do I have to write any of the lyrics myself?
- No, and most people write none. You describe the person and the song is written from that. If you would rather have a hand in it, the Big Ditty lets you edit or rewrite the words yourself and have them sung again.
- Can I edit the words after I have heard it?
- Yes on the Big Ditty, which includes edits and re-records. On the other lengths you can change your answers and have new words written before you pay, and ask for another take afterwards.
- Can I choose the music style and the singer?
- Yes, both, before anything is recorded. You pick the style from a list — folk, pop, gospel, musical theatre, k-pop and dozens more — and whether it is sung by a man or a woman.
- What if their name is unusual or hard to pronounce?
- Tell us how it sounds and the singer will use that. If a take still gets it wrong, that is exactly what a re-record is for, and we do not charge you for our mistake.
- Can one song be about two people, or a whole family?
- Yes. Name them and say what each is like, and they all end up in it. It is one of the best uses of a longer Ditty — a card for a couple or a family plays out loud to a room rather than to one person.
- Can I choose the picture on the card, or do I get what I am given?
- You choose. There are over twelve thousand designs to browse by occasion or by who it is for, we draw one from your song automatically, and you can have a fresh one drawn if neither suits.
- Can I upload my own photo?
- No. Every picture is drawn or chosen from our own library, and we deliberately do not accept uploads — accepting images from the public brings a duty of care we are not equipped to carry, so we do not open that door at all.
- Can I change the words printed on the card?
- Yes. The name, the message, the fonts and the layout are all editable in the card designer, and what you see there is exactly what they open.
- Do I need an account to make one?
- No. You can make and send a whole Ditty without signing up. If you want to come back to it later we email you a link — there is no password to invent.
- Can I do all this on my phone?
- Yes. The whole thing — the questions, listening, editing the card, sending it — works on a phone, which is where most people make one.
- How long does the whole thing take me?
- About ten minutes of your attention, most of it deciding what to say. The writing takes seconds and the recording a few minutes, and you can walk away and come back while it is being made.
- Can I make one for myself?
- Nothing stops you, and people do — for a milestone, or to mark a year. The form asks who it is for, and the answer is allowed to be you.
- Will it be obvious it was made by AI?
- You will hear that the voice is synthetic — we say so on every page rather than letting you find out. What is not automated is the part that lands: the details are yours, and that is what makes someone recognise themselves in it.
- What if I get a detail wrong after I have sent it?
- The link always shows the current version, so fixing the song or the card updates what they see. If they have not opened it yet, they will never know there was another one.
More questions — what it costs, what you can change, who sings it — are answered on the pricing page.