Suno is now generating 7 million songs a day — how will that change the music industry? Mikey Shulman, CEO and cofounder of Suno, joins Billboard On The Record to explain how he built the popular — but controversial — AI music company. Suno can generate new songs in seconds, and it has become the hottest topic in the music industry. I
n the interview, Shulman explains how Suno is being adopted by “Grammy winners” and “grandmothers” alike. He discusses the songwriting camps the company has been putting on, its private VIP program, new features such as Hooks — its TikTok-like social media feed — and why he doesn’t see himself selling the start-up to an AI giant down the line. Shulman also talks about Suno’s new deal with Warner Music Group, why he feels training on music without a license is legal and why he believes record labels still matter.
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Kristin Robinson: Suno, it’s the most controversial new company in music since Spotify or maybe even Napster. Already generating 7 million songs a day, according to an investor pitch deck, Suno has quickly become a front-runner in the AI music race.
But it’s also made its fair share of enemies along the way. That’s because Suno’s model is currently trained on copyrighted songs without a license. They say that’s fair use. The music industry begs to differ.
But now, Suno has agreed to relaunch its models sometime later this year using only licensed songs for training. But is that enough to make the music industry forgive and forget? To talk through this pivotal moment in music, I’m joined today by Suno’s CEO Mikey Schulman in this special companion episode of our Billboard cover story on the AI music company, out today. Mikey Schulman, welcome to On The Record. Thank you so much for being here.
Mikey Schulman: So happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
OK. So, this is your first Grammy Week.
It is.
How has it been?
Exhausting. But also a lot of fun. Also learning a lot, yeah, great experience.
Yeah. So, I saw you yesterday. So, I’m, I’m setting the scene here for our listeners that this is during Grammy Week because this will come out in a month, and in AI world, a lot can change in a month. So, just in case something changes, this is where we’re at right now. It’s, like, the end of January, the start of February. OK, so I went by Suno’s songwriting camp yesterday, which you’ve been running throughout the week, which has been really interesting. And you were kind of inviting people in to go and see the process. And I’m wondering: How many of these songwriting camps have you guys been doing and why is that important to your strategy as a company?
Keep watching for more!