Suno AI, or simply Suno, is an AI music generator that has gained widespread recognition since partnering with Microsoft to provide a plugin for Copilot in December 2023. Since then, it has become one of the most popular AI music generators, as it makes creating songs as easy as composing text with ChatGPT.
There have been AI music generators before, from Adobe's Project Music GenAI to YouTube's Dream Track to Voicify AI (now Jammable). What's different about Suno is that it can create everything from lyrics to vocals to instrumentation from simple text prompts. You can also specify the exact genre you want, from Delta Blues to electronic chillwave, or let it create music based on your own compositions.
Suno's latest model V3.5 allows you to create 4-minute songs even with a free account. Results vary depending on the genre you choose, but Suno can produce some very impressive results. If you want more specific results, you can upload your own audio clips and use the Extend feature to let Suno create a song based on your own music.
But how exactly does Suno work, who owns the rights to the generated music, and how can you start making your own roborock? We'll answer all these questions for you. Dive into the rock world of AI-generated music…
What is Suno?
Suno is a web- and app-based text-to-music generator that can create complete songs in seconds from simple text prompts. For example, when you tell it to create a “psychedelic UK garage song about a friend who's obsessed with Nokias,” it creates two four-minute songs complete with vocals, instruments, lyrics, titles, and artwork.
The free version of Suno allows you to do all this, but of course these accounts are limited: you can only get up to 50 credits (enough for 10 songs) per day, and you have to wait until the next day to generate more. Also, free accounts don't allow you to use songs commercially, so they're only good for hobbyists or writing songs for your dog.
If you subscribe to the Pro plan ($10 a month, about £8 / AU$15), you get 2,500 credits per month, enough to generate 500 songs a day. It also lets you use the songs commercially, such as uploading them to YouTube, Spotify or Apple Music. It also gives you priority in the song generation queue, so you don't have to wait around for Suno to work its magic.
The Premier plan ($30 a month, about £23 / AU$44) raises the daily limit to 2,000 songs, making Bob Dylan look decidedly lazy, but no matter which plan you choose, you'll have access to all of Suno's tools, including a custom mode for writing your own lyrics, the ability to upload your own audio (to base a song on), and an instrumental mode for creating new work music.
How does Suno work?
Like most generative AI tools, exactly how Suno works is a bit unclear, leading to at least one lawsuit. It's still not clear what data or music the tool was trained on. We've reached out to Suno for clarification but have yet to hear back.
But more broadly, Suno works in a similar way to large-scale language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT: large amounts of training data (which in Suno's case includes audio recordings) help it create original songs and lyrics based on prompts. For text, LLMs typically work by predicting the most likely word to come next in a given sequence, which is much harder for music.
For this reason, Suno uses a so-called diffusion model (found in Midjourney, for example) alongside the transformer model. In an interview with Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mikey Shulman, CEO and co-founder of Suno, said: “Not all audio is processed with a transformer. There is a lot of audio that is processed with diffusion. There are pros and cons to each of these two approaches.”
Whatever algorithms are running inside Suno, it's one of the best AI music generation engines we've ever seen (or heard). Of course, the results are highly compressed and it's better at imitating some genres than others, but it's also the perfect project for a rainy weekend afternoon.
How do I use Suno?
Suno is incredibly easy to use, almost to the point that it might worry anyone who currently earns an income from music. Simply head over to the Suno website, create a free account, and head to the “Create” section to get started.
Here you will find a small box where you can write a description of your song. The main thing to remember is to describe the style of music you want (i.e. genre) and the topic you want to cover in your song. You cannot ask Suno to write something in the style of a specific artist. That's natural, since Suno does not have a label license (yet).
The mobile version of Suno (currently only available in the US) is even easier to use but has fewer features: enter the prompts to describe the song, describe the genre of music you want, give your song a title, and you're done.
We asked Suno to write a theme song for TechRadar, a celebration of gadgets and technology in the electronic chillwave genre, and you can listen to the resulting song, “Future frequencies,” below (or open the song in Suno and read the lyrics).
Not bad for a first try: It's not going to win any Grammys with its generic EDM synth sounds and echoes of The Weeknd, but it's also one of the few times Suno pronounces TechRadar's name correctly.
Challenging Suno with simpler genres produces slightly more mixed results: our attempt at making a solo acoustic song about “a sad AI who longs to be human” ends up sounding like a robotic Phoebe Bridgers forced to write a Eurovision ballad; Suno also had a very hard time writing a birthday song for a friend in a psychedelic '90s rock style.
But we've also heard some surprisingly impressive results with blues music: Rolling Stone, for example, crafted a Delta blues track called “Soul of the Machine” (below), which has been played nearly 40,000 times on Soundcloud and sounds like a lo-fi recording from the Deep South.
One of the touted benefits of Suno's previous V3 model, launched in March, was “more styles and genres,” while the latest V3.5 model boasts “improved song structure and vocal flow.”
You can also use other applications like Band in a Box to hone your Suno results and improve sound quality and instrumentation. Get the audio file by going to the three dots on the song title, then “Download,” then “Audio.”
One of the coolest features of Suno is that it allows you to extend a song, meaning that Suno will analyze your song and generate more music in the exact same style. This can be done from a song you have already generated (from the three dots menu).[拡張](Select[作成]Section[オーディオのアップロード]You can also upload audio to extend the song by clicking[パート 2]This will generate a track labeled: Next, select[曲全体を取得]You need to select it and put everything together on one track.
Obviously you can't monetize it unless you subscribe to a paid plan, and you have to attribute the copyright of the song to Suno. Of course, this raises a big debate about copyright and ownership…
Who owns the songs made with Suno?
The short answer is that you own the songs generated using Suno, as long as you pay for a Pro or Premier plan. For free users, Suno says that you retain ownership of the songs generated.
However, this is different to copyright ownership: Suno's FAQ section states that “the availability and scope of copyright protection for content (in whole or in part) generated using artificial intelligence is a complex and dynamic area of law that is rapidly evolving and varies from country to country.”
For example, in the United States, creative works created by AI without human involvement currently don't have copyright, but text-to-music tools like Suno complicate the situation, so if you really want up-to-date legal guidance regarding your AI-created masterpiece, Suno recommends consulting a lawyer.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and major music labels recently sued both Suno and Udio for copyright infringement. It's unclear how this will affect the future of AI music generation. Suno seems to be taking a “don't worry” stance and recently released a mobile app. But a courtroom showdown may be on the horizon.
Some people may remember the song “Heart on my Sleeve,” which became a hot topic in May 2023. The song was said to be created by Drake and The Weeknd and was viewed 9 million times on TikTok, but it was later revealed that a user named Ghostwriter977 had used AI to create it. In response to this, the artist's record label, Universal Music Group, issued a takedown notice, and the copyright debate is still ongoing.
As such, Suno can't ask you to generate a song in a particular artist's style or to use the actual artist's voice – this area is very much a case of “watch this space” (in Suno's case, while wearing a big pair of your best noise-canceling headphones).
What's next for Suno?
One glimpse into where Suno might be heading is Google's Dream Track, which is working with artists to enable a small number of early users to generate AI soundtracks for YouTube Shorts.
If Suno gets music labels on board, they'll be able to use their favorite artists as inspiration to create new AI-generated tracks in their style. “In a few years, when the licensing environment is a little less uncertain, you might be able to feed a Taylor Swift song into the model,” Suno CEO Mikey Shulman said in an interview with Lightspeed Venture Partners.
The idea is to pay artists in a similar way to how sampling works today, but their music will be used as a template for new AI-generated tracks.
But it's still in its early stages, and licensing issues are far from being resolved, so for now Suno is positioned more as a fun way to create original birthday songs for your friends, rather than a full-fledged robot musician.
There are also many competitors, such as Google, Adobe, OpenAI, etc. But for now, Suno is one of the best tools I've tried for creating AI music compositions, and with V4 coming soon, I'm excited to see how it evolves in the future.
