Mikey Shulman is co-founder and chief executive officer of Suno, a generative artificial intelligence startup in Cambridge that lets people be rock stars without ever picking up an instrument. Users type a few words into the app—“I want a walk-up song for my Little League at bats,” say—and Suno will spit out a complete tune. The results improve with more detailed instructions about genres and lyrics; if you want that walk-up song to be a spoken-word poem with a dubstep beat, go crazy. Paying users can train Suno on their voices, so their creations can even sound like they’re singing them. More than 100 million people have used the product since 2023, and over 2 million people shell out as much as $30 a month for it. Shulman says Suno will do for music what Instagram did for photography. Not everyone can be Ansel Adams, but anyone can post a selfie. Not everyone can be Olivia Rodrigo, but now anyone can crank out a ballad.
“We’re going to change how people are entertaining themselves"
"We’re going to change how people are entertaining themselves"
is anybody using this slop for entertainment? I actually think the use case of "walk-up song for Little League" is smart, but AI creative output works best as backdrop, not the main course. Seems naive to think that I would listen to my friends' AI karaoke at a frequency anywhere close to my Spotify habits.
Yes, from time to time I buy a subscription and upload my songs to see what comes out. Very entertaining. If you know how to handle it, the output is far from slop; see e.g. https://rochus-keller.ch/?p=1428. The whole point is, that this is just another "instrument" (i.e. a means to make music, as was the drum machine in the eighties, or the Fairlight for those who could afford, or all its much cheaper alternatives in the nineties to this day). The "instrument" doesn't replace musicality and abilities, but it enables people who have those to make (good) music.
I'm sorry but i literally have zero interest in art that doesn't demonstrate process or talent. Prompting abstracts both of those away.
I think of Suno "music" like I think of Soylent as "food": it gets the job done as a means to an end, but hell no would I ever consume it for its taste alone.
By the way, Zappa is rolling in his grave to be invoked on this article
Is this an AI generated response? It has nothing to do with what I wrote, what I demonstrated or my actual experience as a trained musician. Your text sounds very generic, obviously without checking my sources. Nobody requires you to have interest in things you don't like, and you are free to prefer the slop you are served by the "big four" of the music industry. Btw. Zappa would have liked today's possibilities (just have a look at Francesco Zappa or Jazz from Hell, and his justification “if they can’t play it, then why should I be denied the privilege of hearing what I imagine and what I write").
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Archive: https://archive.is/lh9rD
"An update to our downloads policy and Terms of Service"
https://suno.com/blog/suno-updates-tos
https://suno.com/terms-september-2026
tl;dr They will watermark songs you generate and remove older models and restrict paying customers to max 20/60 song downloads a month.
"We’re going to change how people are entertaining themselves"
is anybody using this slop for entertainment? I actually think the use case of "walk-up song for Little League" is smart, but AI creative output works best as backdrop, not the main course. Seems naive to think that I would listen to my friends' AI karaoke at a frequency anywhere close to my Spotify habits.
Yes, from time to time I buy a subscription and upload my songs to see what comes out. Very entertaining. If you know how to handle it, the output is far from slop; see e.g. https://rochus-keller.ch/?p=1428. The whole point is, that this is just another "instrument" (i.e. a means to make music, as was the drum machine in the eighties, or the Fairlight for those who could afford, or all its much cheaper alternatives in the nineties to this day). The "instrument" doesn't replace musicality and abilities, but it enables people who have those to make (good) music.
I'm sorry but i literally have zero interest in art that doesn't demonstrate process or talent. Prompting abstracts both of those away.
I think of Suno "music" like I think of Soylent as "food": it gets the job done as a means to an end, but hell no would I ever consume it for its taste alone.
By the way, Zappa is rolling in his grave to be invoked on this article
Is this an AI generated response? It has nothing to do with what I wrote, what I demonstrated or my actual experience as a trained musician. Your text sounds very generic, obviously without checking my sources. Nobody requires you to have interest in things you don't like, and you are free to prefer the slop you are served by the "big four" of the music industry. Btw. Zappa would have liked today's possibilities (just have a look at Francesco Zappa or Jazz from Hell, and his justification “if they can’t play it, then why should I be denied the privilege of hearing what I imagine and what I write").