I played with it a bit, and no, it doesn't! And I am talking as someone with limited music culture, musicians are likely to be even more critical.
For the first few tries, it sounds impressive and the tunes are catchy. It used to sound wrong in the background but they mostly (but not completely) fixed that. However, after a few dozen songs, it starts to always sound the same. It is all generic stuff, the songs tell no story, it is a bit like the kind of music that accompany corporate advertisement. You can try to be more precise in your prompt, but I never had any success, it will just ignore most of the details that could make your song interesting.
The most interesting result I had was actually when I managed to get it off rails, a bug more or less. I asked it to mix two very different genres together, and it made something unsettling in a way I don't remember hearing before. But as always, further working on it proved extremely difficult, as it always tried to go back to making generic stuff, ignoring the details you give it.
Suno can do remixes though. And it is a bit like with code. LLMs are very good at porting, when you already have something that works, it can make it work in another language. But if you just have an idea, it will screw up at anything original. If you want a LLM to implement your idea properly, you have to give it so much guidance that it amounts to writing the code yourself, while struggling with the ambiguousness of natural languages.
By giving up that control, you do get to a quality end result sooner, but that end result can only be an approximation to your original vision, since you're giving up the control required to shape the sound to that granular level.
More generally, we think that music (and art in general) is a form of human expression and communication. The very idea of AI music just seems absurd, as it completely misses the point of what constitutes music as an artform. Why should I listen to something that has been produced entirely without human intent? Why should I prefer a cheap simulacrum over the original?
The problem is that it's doing it by diffusion techniques, so all its high percussion is totally vague and indistinct. Hell, it can't even do a decent psy kick because that too is unspecific and you can't have a psy track that is vague and blunted.
Turns out you can have a production that is hollow, weak and devoid of what makes purely synth machine tracks. It can't get trancey in a serious way because it's not capable of being sharp enough.
Got an example of the genre done properly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va1KBtI81TY or alternately you could just look up some Infected Mushroom early tracks :)
I think this is a huge part of the reason people sometimes find AI criticism so dismissible; there is always some factor other than the actual product it seems that AI-made assets are judged on. With Suno, the biggest ones I've seen are 1) hating AI-created music by virtue of it being AI-created, and 2) the hate is from people who attempt to generate income from their music production, and Suno made music cuts into that pie.
The most appealing part of my favrorite music is the human element. When I hear someone singing and I know they mean it.
When they tell me a story and I can tell it’s genuine.
When I can relate to what they’re saying and who they are as a human.
Suno will never be able to recreate that.
Not hating it on principle would be something like "Suno-produced music I've listened to is derivative/soulless and has that annoying AI quality that makes me want to turn it off immediately. Maybe one day it could produce something genuinely moving and beautiful, but I'm skeptical."
They didn't even say they "hate" other music, either, just that it's not their favorite.
If someone says "I only like green paintings", that excludes red paintings, even ones that have the word "green" written on them. Nothing to "fix" there, if anything, the question is why some people just won't accept that. They are acting oddly, not the people who know what they like and why.
Followed by how to be properly open-minded and not an AI-hater. Yeah, you didn't use those exact words either, but that was the implication.
And "liking humans", that is, preferring them in music (of all things!) isn't "hating AI".
AI can’t recreate that.
It can create sounds that are pleasing to the ears, but music is so much more than that.
It's like any LLM, it's not a tool for if you know exactly what you want with all these knobs and fine grained controls.
> The most interesting result I had was actually when I managed to get it off rails, a bug more or less. I asked it to mix two very different genres together, and it made something unsettling in a way I don't remember hearing before.
I don't think that's a bug or unexpected, it's what AI is good for. I do these (very) old Blues covers of modern songs and it's terrific at that sort of conversion thing.
In this particular case, it really gave some "uncanny valley" feeling. That is, on the surface, it sounds like something familiar, but something is off. The wrongness was completely unintended, not prompted for, but interesting, in the same way that eldritch horror is interesting.
I wanted to mix heavy metal and hardstyle, the idea I had in mind was to imagine a battle, one side being represented by one style, and the other, by another style, each side responding to the other. It didn't give that much thought to it, but it sounded fun. And instead of getting the back and forth I expected, I got... weirdness.
I then tried to add some matching lyrics, that is, something similarly uncanny, also using AI. It also turned out to be somewhat difficult and not all LLMs managed to pull it off (ended up with GPT-5.5). That is, for many LLMs, especially the small, self-hosted ones, I couldn't get the effect I wanted, even after trying different prompt strategies. Scary words, spooky scenes, etc... no problem, but that's the opposite of what I wanted. I wanted something subtly wrong, not an B movie horror scene. Also, by adding the lyrics to the song, Suno lost a bit of an edge to the song.
If you are interested, here are the links, with and without lyrics. Don't expect anything good, it is just a little experiment: https://suno.com/s/Amu1FcrjkHsB2WTt , https://suno.com/s/gXMfNnv1g453PiaS
https://suno.com/song/a24e349b-de3b-4f98-a733-f7f70949571f
https://suno.com/s/Ff9n8A7R9k7iTpBD
I definitely come from the angle of appreciating the novelty and newness of sound from this generated music, especially when tasked with mashups. I'd not use if I had a strong vision around refining a particular song though, maybe that's the challenge with the "battle" inspiration you were after.
FYI though you can give some hints to the generation about what you want, if you look at the 'lyrics' for the two instrumental songs above you'll see them in the brackets.
i actually was discussing that with a guy i met the other day, an old school producer, did succesful stuff 30 years ago. He used SUNO to reinterpret old and ideas of his, in his judgement it did an excellent job and lets him create many songs daily if he want.
Sounds familliar? the good old "let AI be steered by experienced X and boost productivity".
All in all, gun to the head, i think i am so critical because to use these tools is surrendering to big corpos. It is not a democratic tool. If it was i would probably be using it. I have finally given up and started messing with local models (well, i did already with images) but general local models are useless.
OR maybe it's me? i cannot for one moment let go and converse with the machine. I can give order to the machine.
The tech is fantastic, but the fact that it's in the hand of corpos with all interests in never letting us be able to do shit without them, makes me one hundred and one percent against it.
It'll happen, eventually. How could it not?
They don't "solve" execution.
If you're willing to push them enough, and put in place the system that they can actually get working code, they can solve execution - but that IS engineering!!
They are far from doing that by default now (replacing engineering).
Maybe in 3 years. They're moving fast.
But you can't ask them to build you a better Rust compiler, sit back and watch, and get a result today.
That is what takes determination and why you have to really care about the thing you are trying to sell to people. You have to stick to it before they will stick to it.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sixteenam....
And of course, especially for music, the human element is pretty much the entire point, so while a lot of people enjoy it for a while as a toy to play around, I don't think many people would seriously consider listening to AI music as being worth their time. It would be like knowingly and deliberately reading fake news.
https://x.com/chamath/status/2033385903520129161
> I think a great example of what probably will happen is found in Suno, the AI Music thing. I don't know if y'all have tried it, but it now produces really good stuff. What's happening there? A lot of people play with their own little universe and get tired quickly, move away from it, and only a few prolific creators stay and turn it into a "job like" environment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
Sturgeon's law states, "Ninety percent of everything is crap". The adage was coined by American science fiction author and critic Theodore Sturgeon while defending the merits of the genre. Sturgeon observed that most works in any field were low quality. Therefore, science fiction was not uniquely inferior.
As an information architect I find it amazing it works so good, but is useless to me except being a great think to play with… a toy really. I’m much more fascinated by Strudel.cc and LLMs do a great job to educate me into it, myself being mostly an autodidact.
As a dev I struggle to maintain coherence with Claude Code even though I’ve piped more than 10b tokens since Jan. Certain trivial stuff is easily remedied but even more devil lives in abundance of details now. So the task moves one level above in terms of abstraction, but is not solved.
If guys were good at typing one and the same thing in one and the same lang, which is nothing wrong about given how crafts went for ages, then they will be struggling to compete with the GPTs. But if they are in the architectural and operational perspective … well - work and demand just increased, so please stop whining.
The high watermark of what can be "solved" (read: one shotted) is rising, and will continue to rise. Look at the gig economy (Fiver etc) for simple programming/design tasks, LLMs have taken over completely with their execution.
The future is going to be different.
Right now, people effectively spend ~0% of their time entertaining themselves with their own music, art, writing, film, etc.
In the future, it's going to be >0%.
Will it be >10%? Who knows.
First, the 0% figure is not true. People do write stories, play instruments or draw pictures.
Second, everybody who really feels a desire to express themselves creatively has akready been able to do so. Nothing was stopping you from writing poems, drawing pictures or picking up an instrument. Recording music has never been so easy. The "problem" is, of course, that it takes some effort. LLMs seem to provide a convenient shortcut, but you effectively skip the whole artistic process.
IMO it's better to either engage with existing great art or make an honest and humble attempt at creating your own art. You will learn so much more about music by trying to learn the piano or guitar than by prompting Suno.
And who said it has?
You seem to imply that you can't have created any art ever in your life if you ever did anything with AI.
It's almost as if you can do both, and it's almost as if you're open-minded you can appreciate either when it's worth appreciating.
Sorry, I've seen just as much thoughtless garbage from humans as from AI...
The human touch is not automatically genius, and the AI touch is not automatically derivative trash...
You've claimed that "right now, people effectively spend ~0% of their time entertaining themselves with their own music, art, writing, film, etc."
So I assumed that you don't spend your time with traditional creative pastimes or don't know any people who do. Otherwise I don't understand how you would come up with the ~0% figure.
> You seem to imply that you can't have created any art ever in your life if you ever did anything with AI.
I did not say that you can't use any AI tools in the creative process, but anyone who has ever tried to create their own art will not confuse the verbatim output of AI models like Suno or Midjourney with actual art.
> The human touch is not automatically genius,
I never claimed that. The nice thing is that there is so much existing art/music out there that you can easily choose the things you like.
I understand that prompting Suno can be a fun pastime for some people, just don't confuse it with actual music or art.
> Sorry, I've seen just as much thoughtless garbage from humans as from AI...
Yes, there is lots of thoughtless garbage music made by humans, but all AI generated music is thoughtless by definition. AI models do not have thoughts or intentions, they are developed to mimick human thought and intent.
> and the AI touch is not automatically derivative trash...
Generating whole songs with Suno very much is. These models are designed to be derivative. AI tools can be used effectively and responsibly in the creative process, but only as a tool among other tools. Prompting Suno is not a replacement for actual music making or production.
LOL - so let me guess, 99% of people never create anything resembling art?
AI regularly spits out better derivative crap than 99% of the derivative crap humans spit out...
I don't see how that follows.
> AI regularly spits out better derivative crap than 99% of the derivative crap humans spit out...
It's not only derivative, it also lacks any thought, intent or communicative effort.
Why should I listen to AI slop when there is lots of great human made music to choose from?
Yes, some AI music might sound better than the worst human made music, but should this really be the baseline?
So does most "human" art...
> Why should I listen to AI slop when there is lots of great human made music to choose from?
Hmm, I dunno, maybe because if you play around with it you might generate something that's close enough to what you wanted to listen to. Maybe you won't. Maybe not everyone is you and some people have different tastes...
Almost nobody could generate a good enough song or story or video or graphic or whatever in the fraction of time it takes with Gen AI.
For some people (clearly you are not one of them) - that is good and fun and entertaining in a new way that simply was impossible to get in the same amount of time / effort.
> So does most "human" art...
That's just not true. Everybody who tries to write their own songs, write their stories or draw their own pictures does it with at least some thought or intent.
> Hmm, I dunno, maybe because if you play around with it you might generate something that's close enough to what you wanted to listen to.
That might work for some music, if you only care about the surface. But even then, why not simply pick some good existing human art? By choose the simulacrum?
The things you generate with Suno are not really your art anyway. That's an illusion that these companies want to sell. It's like you invite your friend who plays the guitar and can sing, ask him/her to play a few songs and then pick the one you like. Would you claim that it's your music?
> Almost nobody could generate a good enough song or story or video or graphic or whatever in the fraction of time it takes with Gen AI.
There's a fundamental misunderstanding about creativity/art. It's just as much about the process as the end result. You shouldn't expect your output to match that of professional studios or masters of the craft without putting in the time, effort (and money). That's just hybris. There's a reason why things like the DIY movement, punk, indie games, B movies, etc. exist. Everybody can already create art within their means and limits. If you write and record your own song, you can be proud of that. You don't have to sound like a professional pop artist. By prompting Suno, on the other hand, you have accomplished nothing.
> that is good and fun and entertaining in a new way that simply was impossible to get in the same amount of time / effort.
As I said, I see how it can be fun and entertaining. I played around with Udio myself and I got some funny results. Just don't confuse it with actual art or music making.
Does it? It produces passable stuff that is fine. However the lack of passion and care completely disinterests me.
It is the whole business flow chain of value to the end user what is valuable.
No. I assumed that at best it will be not better than average human-made music available to listeners.
> but it now produces really good stuff.
Does it? Do you have examples?
(note: I actually do not care about all "hand-made" and have no preference for once-off over serially made products)
It's great that people find joy in it, but as someone that is critical of both music production and fidelity, the current offerings fall incredibly short of anything I would ever want to listen to.
Good ideas are expensive. They're expensive because you have to weed through all the bad ones to identify them, find a market, and turn them into a product. You don't know that from the start, which is why the landscape is littered with millions of dead projects from thousands of dead companies.
Even if the execution were cheap and implementation were perfect, if the starting idea was bad, it's all been a waste.
Ideas aren't cheap, because bad ideas are expensive and good ideas cost money to vet.
Suno doesn't make music, it makes simulacra of music. Music is only made by humans.
The same is true for LLMs. You can get Claude to spew 2,000 lines of garbage in 15 minutes, but the number of developers actually willing to sit there and reason over the output and make the tweaks--often very minimal tweaks--that make it go from 90% correct to 100% correct are vanishingly few. And it's typically just laziness and a lack of any kind of genuine interest in the field.
In this case, it's difficult for me to see what exactly is gained by offloading all of those decisions to a mean regression algorithm. I agree it's a fun toy, but I can't imagine actually listening to or deeply enjoying any song made with these music models.
I could imagine it being used successfully in some targeted part of the process. For example, manipulating drums or changing the timbre of some previously recorded instrument. In that case it's not much different than traditional music creation tools like sampling.
Steve Jobs didn't mean "writing good code" as "execution", he meant "making things that align with how people want to use the product". Frontier LLMs are not solving Steve Jobs-level execution (even in the near future) because what that would mean understanding human nature – something that Steve Jobs or Henry Ford were much better than most in the industry today, so at best we're going to see LLMs making things that are as good as the majority of products. Because AI does not see whether something is perfect-according-to-Steve-Jobs or merely good-code-according-to-engineering-practices.
What I think is often overlooked is the human "Willingness" and "Care" of staying with the thing for the lack of a better term. What I mean by that is that a lot of people just don't care enough, or don't want to, build, maintain, and own things. Sure you can ship V1 faster, but will you remain on the grind?
I think a great example of what probably will happen is found in Suno, the AI Music thing. I don't know if y'all have tried it, but it now produces really good stuff. What's happening there? A lot of people play with their own little universe and get tired quickly, move away from it, and only a few prolific creators stay and turn it into a "job like" environment.
We may have shifted the scale and the economics of "delegation" and "execution" but I think there are still a lot of other factors to consider.