It's been a hot summer of AI music news, which means that Stems is especially thrilled to have this guest post from Berklee professor, Mindset MusicTech partner, author and Friend of Stems Drew Thurlow breaking down the latest from Suno. Earlier this year, Drew put out “Machine Music: How AI is Transforming Music’s Next Act” (Routledge), which (unlike many Stems pieces) features actual facts from credentialed experts, and is well worth a look. Drew also runs the Lone Wolves music industry group and co-hosts the podcast of the same name.
Stems is on a reduced publishing schedule this month — see you next week!
MUSIC • MEDIA • TECH| Commentary |
What Suno’s CEO is Really Saying
Stems Guest Post By Drew Thurlow
Mikey Shulman of Suno (translator not pictured)
Let’s take stock of Suno, a company currently occupying the narrow space between music’s most exciting new platform and its favorite defendant.
This past June, Suno announced a Series D raise of more than $400 million, valuing the company at $5.4 billion. If you consider Suno a music company, that is rarefied air: it has been more than two decades since a music startup reached a valuation of this magnitude. If you consider it a technology company, it is more or less another Tuesday.
With $300 million in annual recurring revenue, Suno’s topline is already roughly comparable to SoundCloud’s entire annual business. The company employs around 250 people, has another 60 or so positions open, and has spoken openly about massive expansion plans — making it one of the few businesses in music that can use that phrase with a straight face and an active hiring page. Not bad for a company that has yet to celebrate its third birthday.
I think about Suno’s product as two distinct businesses hiding behind one name. On one side is its text-to-music generator, built largely for non-musicians: type “make an emo song about my group chat” and receive something resembling a finished song. On the other is Suno Studio, an increasingly sophisticated creator tool that functions more like an AI-native digital audio workstation. I saw a demonstration of the next iteration of Studio in Tribeca two weeks ago, and it was genuinely impressive.
For the average person, however, Suno may be better known for its lawsuits — and for the intense campaign to portray it as a company built on music taken from hardworking artists without permission. Critics have accused Suno of, well, everything bad: training its models on copyrighted recordings, exploiting artists’ labor, imitating recognizable voices and styles, devaluing musicianship, diluting royalty pools, and flooding streaming platforms with “AI slop.” In some corners of the industry, Suno is less a music company than a parasitic entity: a preview of our robot apocalypse.