Picture a crate of vinyl so deep you never reach the bottom — except instead of digging through dusty sleeves, you type a few words and the music keeps coming, live, inside your DAW. That is the actual pitch behind The Infinite Crate, Google Magenta’s free DAW plugin. And as of March 9, 2026, the full source code is publicly available on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license.
What The Infinite Crate Does
If you haven’t come across it before, The Infinite Crate launched in July 2025 as a VST3/AU plugin for Mac and Windows. You load it into Ableton, Logic, or any compatible host, point it at a free Gemini API key, and it starts streaming a continuous flow of generated music directly into your DAW — no stems to import, no loops to chop, no files to manage. The audio just arrives and keeps going.
You steer it with text prompts. Type something like “slow jazz piano, rainy night” or “driving techno, no hi-hats,” and the model nudges the stream in that direction. You can run multiple prompts at once with individual influence sliders, crossfading between sonic directions in real time. It syncs to your DAW’s BPM and key, and you can mute bass, drums, or other elements on the fly.
The plugin is built on Lyria RealTime, Google DeepMind’s interactive music generation model. Think of Lyria RealTime as the engine underneath: it creates a continuous, never-stopping stream of 48kHz stereo audio that responds moment-by-moment to user controls, effectively jamming like a musician in a band — playing off its own previous output while reacting to your prompts and parameters. The Infinite Crate is essentially a DAW-native interface for that engine, bringing it out of the browser and into your session. Collaborations with Jacob Collier and Toro y Moi helped shape the design brief, specifically the idea of pulling MusicFX DJ-style prompt control into a proper production workflow.
Getting Your Gemini API Key
This is the only setup step that trips people up, so here it is plainly. A Gemini API key is a free string of characters that tells Google’s servers who is making the request. You need one to use The Infinite Crate. Getting it takes about two minutes:
1. Go to aistudio.google.com/apikey and sign in with any Google account 2. Click Create API Key 3. Select an existing Google Cloud project, or click Create API key in new project if you don’t have one — it creates one automatically 4. Copy the key that appears (it looks like `AIzaSyXXXXXXXXXXXX`) and paste it somewhere safe — you won’t be shown it again 5. Paste that key into the plugin when prompted on first launch
That is it. The free tier is enough for personal and experimental use. Google does offer paid tiers with higher rate limits, but most producers won’t need them unless they’re running extended sessions back to back. One caveat worth knowing: in some European countries, the free tier requires billing to be enabled on your Google Cloud project — you won’t necessarily be charged, but the account does need a card attached to unlock API access. If you ever need to update your key later, on Mac you can reset it by deleting the settings file via Terminal: `rm ~/Library/Application\ Support/Magenta/The\ Infinite\ Crate/The\ Infinite\ Crate.settings`
Installing the Plugin
Once you have a key, installation is straightforward. Download the plugin from the Magenta page for your platform, then:
macOS (Apple Silicon / M-series): 1. Unzip the downloaded file 2. Drag the `.vst3` file into `/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/` for Ableton, or the `.component` file into `/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/` for Logic 3. Restart your DAW and rescan plugins — it appears under Magenta → The Infinite Crate
Windows: 1. Unzip the downloaded file 2. Drag the `.vst3` file into your VST3 folder (typically `C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\`) 3. Restart your DAW and rescan plugins
FYI: since Windows doesn’t use the same global library structure as macOS, finding the settings file to reset your API key is a slightly different process. If you need to clear or update your credentials on a PC, you will typically find the configuration data tucked away in the AppData folder.
Specifically, you’ll want to navigate to C:\Users\[YourUsername]\AppData\Roaming\Magenta\The Infinite Crate\. Keep in mind that “AppData” is a hidden folder by default, so you may need to enable “Hidden items” in the View tab of File Explorer to see it. Simply delete the .settings file within that folder, and the plugin will prompt you for a fresh Gemini API key the next time you load it into your DAW.
Note that Linux and AAX (Pro Tools) are not currently supported. Windows users on high-DPI monitors should also go into the plugin’s `…` menu and disable Auto Scale Plug-In Window for a sharper display in Ableton.
The Apache 2.0 Release
Making the source code available under Apache 2.0 is a different kind of move from simply offering a free download. It means developers can now read how the plugin is built, modify it, build on top of it, package it differently, or use it as a reference when building their own Lyria RealTime-powered tools. There are no licence fees, no restrictions on commercial use, and no need to ask permission.
Magenta’s previous open plugins — Magenta Studio for MIDI manipulation and DDSP VST for real-time audio-to-audio transformation — crossed a million combined downloads. That’s not a trivial number for experimental research tools, and it suggests there’s a genuine audience for AI plugins that work within existing workflows rather than replacing them. The Infinite Crate is the next step in that lineage.
For developers specifically, the codebase opens up some practical possibilities:
- Swap or extend the backend model beyond the default Gemini API
- Redesign the interface for hardware controllers or live performance rigs
- Integrate MIDI input so prompt switching can be triggered from a controller
- Build educational or experimental forks without commercial restriction
- Use it as a blueprint for other Lyria RealTime-based tools
What You Can Do With It Right Now
For producers who just want to use the thing, the practical workflow is straightforward. Drop it into a track, enter your API key, and start sampling the stream. The plugin supports three main modes of use: digging the crate (exploring blended genres and moods as a source of samples and inspiration), jamming along (using it as a dynamic backing track that evolves as you play), and prompt DJing (treating it as a live instrument within a performance or DJ set). The ten-minute session limit — a current constraint of the Lyria RealTime API — means you’ll need to hit Reset periodically, which is clunky but workable.
The controls worth understanding beyond the obvious are Guidance and TopK. Guidance controls how strongly the model chases your current prompts versus continuing the sonic thread of what it just generated. High guidance and it snaps toward your text quickly; low guidance and it drifts organically, producing more fluid long-form results but less predictable direction. TopK controls output diversity — lower values make the stream more deterministic and coherent, higher values introduce more variation. Worth noting: BPM and Key controls are described by Magenta themselves as imprecise, and Key does not differentiate between major and relative minor, so treat them as nudges rather than hard instructions.
At ANR we previously covered the Audialab Engine and the Combobulator as part of the same broader wave of AI plugins built for use inside DAWs rather than as standalone apps. We also covered XLN Audio LIFE, which approached AI-assisted beat generation from a more structured, sample-based angle — a useful comparison point for how differently these tools frame the producer’s role.
The Cloud Problem Nobody Is Pretending Doesn’t Exist
The Infinite Crate runs on Google’s servers. That is a real consideration, and it shapes what the open-source release can and can’t change right now. You can fork the code, but you can’t fork the model. The generation capability lives in the Gemini API, and without that API key and an internet connection, the plugin produces nothing.
For some producers this is a dealbreaker — especially anyone who travels, works in a studio without reliable connectivity, or is wary of depending on a service that could change its pricing or terms. For others, particularly those already using cloud-dependent tools like subscription-based mix assistants, it’s no different from the existing reality of modern production software.
Magenta have been transparent about this limitation rather than papering over it. Alongside The Infinite Crate, they’ve also released Magenta RealTime — a separate open-source model that explores lighter, locally-runnable variants of Lyria. That’s the part of the roadmap worth watching. If and when a version of this runs fully offline, the calculus changes considerably — and the Apache 2.0 codebase will already be waiting.
