Suno Studio, a Generative AI Daw
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Suno Studio, a generative AI DAW, has been released, sparking debate among HN users about its potential impact on the music industry and the role of AI in music creation.
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Suno 6 should solve those issues.
They don't need the same feature list.
What I mean is that in a DAW you have a lots of tools that don't make sense in AI context.
Like for example, people who use agentic workflows don't need a Visual Studio license.
For advertising jingles it makes some sense. For artistic expression, like... what's the point?
I used to release music that people listend to, but not anymore, now the only joy comes from making it for myself. Am I still an artist?
If the MtG card collector is not an artist does that mean they're bad and need to stop?
I think they are doing art.
If the main reason is to keep their items clean, as much time as they use doing the composition or how good it looks, they are not artist.
If the act of creating this AI music provides joy to some, they should do it. I just have a hard time understanding that.
It seems similar to a Garage Band type of software, aiming to entice people with little audio production experience and give them an interesting sounding snippet they can play back to friends.
For example, the only actual audio editing they displayed was slicing and re-pitching (you can't even choose the time-stretch algorithm), which is conceptually very simple to understand.
There's no ability to actually edit dynamics or do very accurate frequency adjustments that I can see from the demos, so it's basically useless for anything I would want to do.
That + latency with MIDI devices is why every DAW-in-a-browser is just a toy.
I somehow doubt a full-blown browser connected to more than a couple of VSTs would be less of a resource hog than doing the same in a DAW. On your computer. That you own. In your house. Without like additional 50ms of latency for the data to travel to the server and back.
As horrible as it sounds, a VST is just a .dll file you're running straight from the Internet. On a "positive" note, they're backwards-compatible with like Windows Vista!
What does that mean? It means that your compositions (outside of bouncing them down to audio stems) exists within a highly proprietary SaaS format and that the moment you stop paying, you've got NOTHING.
99% of major DAWs (Ableton, Logic, FL Studio, Bitwig, Studio One, etc.) are a perpetual license.
Much like those of us hammering away at LLMs who eventually get incredible results through persistence, people are doing the same with these other AI tools, creating in an entirely new way.
I'm sure Suno are working hard on this and these AI tools can only come together as fast as we can figure out the UX for all this stuff, but I'm holding out for when I can guide the music with specific melodies using voice or midi.
For "conventional" musicians, we (or at least I) would love to have that level of control. Often we know exactly what it should sound like, but might not have session musicians or expensive VSTs (or patience) on hand to get exactly the sound we want. Currently we make do with what we have - but this tech could allow many to take their existing productions to the next level.
But when they say it can replace Pop music I can only laugh. It is the most boring early 2000 RnB ever created and it souns thin.
Any Aphex Twin model out there?
The visual stuff also helps to make it more powerfull and cohesive.
The bad part is that it wanders a lot to get nowhere and it does not create a climax that bridges with the second part. The same sounds and ambient with a producer behind that creates an arragment for it would be much more powerful.
https://suno.com/song/72fbfb06-4af8-407c-824d-051ac4afd64f
Sunscreen: https://youtu.be/VBaWtOHPTZw
Purple Sunset Over Lake 2: https://youtu.be/lD7rSxPncs4
Maybe you don't owe AI audio creations better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://suno.com/explore/
https://suno.com/song/07ab552c-1a76-43f4-a619-21a74e774dbd
https://suno.com/song/5be7dd78-8af8-40a4-bb79-9dd5a9e8b71b https://suno.com/song/24f88c40-8459-4f67-8d51-30298d6b9d00 https://suno.com/song/b0c6f4a6-4523-4b39-bbbd-24a0d39a8b6c
This is basically what all the Suno creations sound like to me, which is to say they definitely have a market, but that market isn't for people who have a more than average interest in music.
Is it snobby of me to look down upon art that is created using these tools as lesser because the human did not make every tiny decision going into a peice? That a persons taste and talent is no longer fully used to produce something and for someone reason to me what is what makes the art impressive and meaningful?
Something about art with imperfections still feels exciting, maybe even more so than if I see something that is perfect but if I see an AI gen picture with 6 fingers, I just write it all off as slop.
I am happy to allow my generated code to come from “training data” but I see the use of AI in art, writing and music as using stolen artists hard work.
I feel like as time goes on, I feel even more conflicted about it all.
> That a persons taste and talent is no longer fully used to produce something and for someone reason to me what is what makes the art impressive and meaningful?
Human output isn't sacred. yes this is snobbery, a useless feeling of superiority.
You either adapt or go hungry just like everybody else and art shouldn't be exempt from the mechanics of supply and demand.
Take, for example, a track by Fontaines D.C., a band from Ireland that writes extensively about the lived social and political experience. Knowing where they are from and the general themes of their work makes their tracks feel authentic, and you can appreciate the worldview they have and the time spent producing the art, even if it does not align with your own tastes.
Trying to create something of the same themes and quality from a prompt of “make me an Irish pop rock track about growing up in the country” suddenly misses any authenticity.
Maybe this is what I am trying to get at, but like I said, I feel some conflict about this, as I personally value these tools for productivity
Yes. But aesthetic taste and snobbery usually go hand in hand.
This is the first time I'm actually paying for generated AI content because the value I get is immense. I really think we are headed towards and over supply of content where there will be more stuff to read, watch, listen with very real value in all of them.
This spells out the inevitable change in the labor market for content creators. There will always be value for human created content and some will make more money but it will always have the AI generated content generation competing with it to the point where it will be hard to stay ahead and eventually people will stop caring.
Case in point, I see some comments being snarkish towards Suno but for as a consumer I could care less if you put your soul and years into producing art vs the one I can get a lot of today and now especially when there is virtually no difference in quality.
Truly an amazing accomplishment from Suno team, and probably the first time I've subbed to a music service after decades of downloading mp3s, hunting down new songs to listen to on Youtube. Suno 'steamified" this process and while I will use youtube to discover new genre, I am spending now most of my time in Suno, listening to endless amount of the exact sound I am looking for.
I just haven't heard anything that isn't "slopful" yet. If I do, I will still feel weird about it, but I'm a big believer in the value of "aesthetic objects in themselves", so I am eager to find something I do actually like.
Even just knowing something was drawn or composed by an AI will negatively taint my opinion from the start, but I'm still open.
The problem with AI music is that is just sounds like shit.
https://suno.com/s/gJhedd4hmIsHbccc
https://suno.com/s/qfFWu3kyQ2cXW8mT
You'll notice many similarities in instrumentation, but how is Suno not like a bad RealAudio take on some of these noises haphazardly lumped together?
Or, same artist, different track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhvpCHfe0m0
Don't you need more focus and aggression to make even sell-out weak tea dubstep? I feel the generative process really severely fails to deliver anywhere near the correct sound, even for 'bad artificial lol dubstep' sounds.
Another even closer to the intent of the Suno one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3q_kmpq-9Y
I don't totally discount the position that the human "soul" is what makes art art and all that, but I still do think something can be very enjoyable and good without being created by a sentient entity, in theory.
I was very impressed with v4.5+ that I could get quite good songs evocative of Devo, Yeah Yeah Yeah's, Metric, etc.
Version 5 is currently harder (or I haven't figured out a way) to generate this kind of chopped/produced sound. It doesn't follow complex style definitions and tends to generate songs that are too slow and "smoothed" over.
a quantity over quality argument with regard to art is wild.
We're already here with human created content.
> my favorite genre is new jack swing
My friend, where do you think your favorite genre that AI is now parroting comes from…
as a fellow consumer I care a lot actually
Music is a uniquely interesting case, since music has a much lower barrier of entry to consume.
For example, I had never heard epic power metal about birds, but with Suno I got exactly what I wanted. Sure, the sound quality (I only used v3.5) could be better and the songs could be longer, but I don’t care, I now have epic songs about my Bourke’s parakeet. However, I’m not pretentious enough to think those songs are interesting to anyone other than my wife and me, hence the smallness of the bubble.
Generating ‘content’ tailored to you and not meant for someone else’s taste.
Human artists need to make money and those who create music for a tiny bubble probably can’t make enough.
So as an artist what do you do? Do you have to create music with mass market appeal from the beginning?
Or do you need to bank on luck that your music for ‘small bubbles’ gets discovered?
Or you have to have clever marketing strategies to get your music in front of more ears to hopefully gain more fans. And create merch, tour etc.
I wonder how all this AI music is going to impact indie artists. Spotify and the likes is just ripping them off and on top of that their music is / has been stolen from these AI data gobblers.
I don’t see how at this stage it can replace human expression though (singing, playing violin, piano, etc) which is very nuanced.
Same with acting… nuanced expressions that matter. I’m not sure AI can replicate the acting skills of Denise Gough (Dedra from Andor) for example… and many others.
But it would be awesome to generate more story lines or episodes from your favourite TV shows, for example shows from over 20 years ago.
Imagine being able to create more episodes of Star Trek TNG or DS9, maintaining the feel of that era without letting someone like Kurtzmann ruin and tell you how new Star Trek should be.
But how do you ensure actors, writers and other creatives from that show will be compensated directly?
Or maybe this will only be possible in a Star Trek like world, where profit uber alles is not the focus anymore.
It either needs to be: 1. So easy anyone can press a button and magically get exactly what they want with perfect accuracy and quality. 2. So robust and powerful it enables new kinds of music production and super-charges human producers.
This is neither. And I don't buy Suno's argument that they're solving a real problem here. Creative people don't hate the process of creating art-- it's the process itself and the personal expression that make it worthwhile. And listeners/consumers can tell the difference between art created with intent and soul, and a pale imitation of that.
But then you look at image gen. The established one, namely Adobe, are surprisingly not winning the AI race.
Then you look at code gen. The established IDEs are doing even worse.
I don't rule out the possibility of music being truly special, but the idea of "established tools can just easily integrate AI right" isn't universally true.
I'd argue music generation is different from image or code generation. It's closer to being purely art. Take image generation for example. Most of the disruption is coming from competition with graphic design, marketing, creative/production processes, etc. The art world isn't up in arms about AI "art" competing with human art.
What Adobe and others ought to be doing is setting up internal labs that have free reign to explore whatever ideas they want, with no barriers or formality. I doubt any of them will do that.
Don't forget the secret third option - facilitate a tidal wave of empty-calorie content which saturates every avenue for discovery and "wins" purely by drowning everything else out through sheer volume. We're at the point where some genAI companies are all but admitting that's their goal.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/ai-podcas...
That way I get new musical ideas from Suno but without any trace of Suno in the final output. Suno's output, even with the v5 model, is never quite what I want anyway so this way makes most sense to me. Also it means there's no Suno audio watermarking in the final product.
Most success as a musician stems from developing a unique style, having a unique timbre, and/or writing creative lyrics. Whether a coder, designer, artist, or musician, the best creatives start by practicing the patterns of those who came before. But most will never stand out and just follow existing patterns.
AI is nothing more than mixing together existing patterns, so it's not necessarily bad. Some people just want to play around and get a result. Others will want to learn from it to find their own thing. Either way works.
It shouldn't be a magic button that does everything for you, removing the human element. A human consciously making decisions with intent, informed by life experience, to share a particular perspective, is what makes art art.
Respectfully I disagree. We have had curated, manufactured pop, built by committee and sung by pretty mouthpieces with no emotional connection, for a long time now, and they make big money.
And look at the vocaloid stuff too.
Those who care, care. Everyone else?
What about the vocaloid stuff?
It’s a counterpoint to the above argument that listeners will be dismissive of AI-produced music because it is a pale imitation of art created with intent and soul. On the contrary, such music thrives and is very popular already.
A particular piece of art isn't "soulless" just because it didn't move you. There were still plenty of humans involved in making it, who made specific artistic decisions. In pop music, the creative decisions are often driven by a desire to be as broadly appealing as possible. That's not a good or bad thing unless you judge it as such. It's still art.
That’s hilarious.
I’m not saying it’s not ‘art’ whatever that might mean, I am saying this idea that people won’t accept and enjoy an AI version is a fantasy.
Strong disagree there. I think that's true of a very small % of consumers nowadays. I mean, total honesty, I think that Suno is not worse than a large fraction of the commercial pop made by humans (maybe) that tops the charts regularly. It's already extremely formula based artificial music made by professional hit makers from Sweden or Korea.
The objective was never to grab discerning listeners but the mass of people. It would work even if they grab 50% but honestly I think it's going to be higher.
I mean, I hate when it's difficult to get the medium to express my vision... not that AI especially would help with that when I'm actually attached to that vision in detail....
Um, have you seen the pop charts at any time in the past... well, since forever, actually?
The majority of commercially produced music today is created with intent to take your money and nothing else, with performers little more than actors lip-syncing to the same tired beat. Because it sells.
Yep. I was a professional music producer before the pandemics, and I couldn't agree more.
Honestly, I'm glad we are destroying every way possible to earn money with music, so we find another profession for that purpose and then we can make music for fun and love again.
they can be (albeit web-based) the "davinci resolve" of DAW, regardless of whether the AI features be bundled away for the paid plans.
For voice removal I use Ultimate Vocal Track Remover, is on Github.
If you want to test it, here's the link: https://www.submithub.com/ai-song-checker
LOL oh hell no! Why would anyone use this if a perpetual subscription is required to maintain the rights? Absurd.
> If you made your songs while subscribed to a Pro or Premier plan, those songs are covered by a commercial use license.
More info here: https://help.suno.com/en/articles/2410177
Suno can create catchy songs and succeed in matching genre expectations / cliches.
I've been in phases where I had output I generated with it playing in my head constantly (due to repeated listening).
The output was catchy.
Then tried to generate interesting music, failed spectacularly.
And I, among other stuff, enjoy a lot of music that people consider formulaic, abstract or straight-up boring.
What's missing in AI "art" is intent and well... creativity.
I think it will have a disrupting influence on commercial pop culture, no question.
I also wouldn't claim to be able to classify correctly whether something is AI output.
But art is something entirely different.
I'm not going to claim AI audio isn't also awash with popular themes and tropes, or that it's a bastion of creativity. I'm also not going to claim that the deepest, really creative ideas aren't expressed in human written works. There are enough people to make truly exceptional songs and prompt many truly mindless AI generations. And there's also nothing wrong with most songs optimizing for personal preferences that are not that; I'm not trying to 'argue against' popular music.
But I am going to claim, for me, that it just hasn't been practical to saturate my tastes from public media, and that most of the reason I personally listen to AI music is that I want something that says or does something I think is creative, exploratory, or intellectually interesting that I don't know how to get from anywhere else.
It's like, sure you can want things from music that are to your specific taste, but it's like coming into a post about, idk, a folk band and complaining that it's not metal. You're allowed to like your thing, but clearly most music is allowed not to be metal, why is this music specifically bad for not being metal?
And in this case the point I'm making is stronger, in that AI audio actually unlocks a lot of ability to listen things that are ‘interesting and creative’ but not widely available because of consumer preference, so it's actually more like showing up to a folk metal fusion band and saying the problem with this band is that it isn't metal.
>Intent is not a lofty concept, it's at the heart of what art is.
Somehow it's assumed that artists make music for the audience, but many make it for themselves, because they enjoy the process.
Contrary to other comments in this thread, typing prompts on a keyboard is not the same as picking up a guitar and playing it.
Weird. That's another phrase I don't see in the post.
>You're allowed to like your thing
Massively generous of you, thanks.
Culture is fluid. Music is about exploring the boundaries of what sounds good, often because of feelings. Related to the society in which the music is "consumed".
AI music is a commodity and generally uninteresting, like artists who only imitate styles.
But just like annoying over-commercialized music that only tries to scratch existing itches and match expectations, it can still work to a degree.
Intent is not a lofty concept, it's at the heart of what art is.
The way you describe music, sure, there will be an AI that is able to provide you with a continuous stream of audiotory stimuli, like the Penfield Mood Organ from "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?".
That's just not what makes art or music interesting to me, and why I also don't listen to auto-curated "mood" playlists on Spotify.
> Penfield mood organ - Humans use the mood organ to dial specific emotions so they can experience emotions without actually possessing them. In the beginning of the novel, Rick implores his wife to use her dialing console to prevent a fight. He wants her to thoughtlessly dial emotions like "the desire to watch TV" or "awareness of the manifold possibilities open to [her] in the future" (Dick, 6). When emotions can be easily avoided with the mood organ, humans no longer require personal relationships to overcome feelings of isolation or loneliness.
The way you describe AI ('continuous stream of auditory stimuli') is the way I'd describe Spotify. Sure, you could use AI to make a faux Spotify, but, like, why would you? The popular stuff already has saturating supply, and it will sound much better than an AI generation.
Regarding this:
> I'm saying I use AI generations for exactly the opposite — so that I can explore and listen to things that are more intellectually interesting in the ways I find intellectually interesting
I just have not found any AI music that would satisfy this description. But I am very interested in failure modes of GenAI. Especially in Suno, it was cracking me up at times.
I'm also sure there will be a space for interesting and/or challenging music generated with neural networks involved.
But I don't see any revolution here so far.
Care to share examples of AI-assisted music you find interesting? To elaborate, I don't find jarring or curious combinations of cliches interesting.
AI could not invent a new style, it seems to me. To repeat this point.
And I've never had any problem finding interesting music.
Key to me is diving into labels, artists and their philosophy, after I got interested into particular ones (the other way around doesn't work for me).
I adore discogs.com for that. Regarding interviews and stuff, there's sadly a huge decline in quality written material about music, I feel.
"Lowest-common-denominator music" is exactly what Suno produces, at least in my ears.
I could go on and list music I like, but generally avoid that.
Wait, I'll do it anyway for a bit... at the moment, I like
Punctum - Remote Sensing EP
(Caterina Barbieri)
and
AtomTM vs Pete Namlook - Jet chamber LP
just for example
I also love so much other music.
To me, such music is miles apart from the slop I heard from AI.
I heard there's research into generating music in the style of JS Bach as well. How's that going?
I'd guess: probably bot too well, because the genius of Bach is not only in complexity, or counterpoint rules.
His music is very emotional to me (at least the portions I like).
And, like any good music, it has moments of surprise. It's not just a formula, or a "vibe", or a "genre".
Could AI create a new Techno, a new Blues, a new Bossa Nova?
I doubt it.
I will also repeat that I'm well aware that the best stuff is definitely all human. It's not my genre either, but traditional composers like Bach certainly made extremely interesting, clever, even deeply-studiable pieces and AI 'in the style of' those composers surely won't capture much of that. There's a lot of stuff AI can't do wholesale; one particularly strong example is if you're Jacob Collier, AI is not going to make the complex harmonizations and song structures there.
AI is pretty bad at these textural or instrument exploration things like from Collier above or Mike Dawes or Yosi Horikawa or Yoko Kanno or Keiichi Okabe. There's a bunch of music I listen to because it's generically a genre or mood I like and it's well produced, which I won't list here, and AI audio can often do stuff like that at baseline but not especially well. There's also nostalgia; I'm also certain a huge part of the reason I like the Celeste soundtrack so much is in part that I liked the game so much.
But then there's a whole category of music I listen to where the texture is supplemental to the part that defines it, like most of Acapella Science or Bug Hunter or Tom Lehrer. Eg. Prisencolinensinainciusol isn't interesting to me because it's musically complex; the part I care about is that it's a listenable execution of an idea, not precisely how it was executed on. I don't keep coming back to I Will Derive by some random schoolkids recorded on a potato 17 years ago annually because it's sung well or they were particularly clever with how they took another song and changed the words; I come back to it because it's fun and reflects for me onto a part of my past that I remember fondly, and these things make me happy.
All these words and I've still only addressed half the comment. Ok, let's consider the idea that it's not enough for AI audio to facilitate the creation of interesting musical pieces, and it instead has to create whole interesting musical styles. I take issue with this in a bunch of places. I don't reject artists who I judge not likely able to create a new Bossa Nova. I judge artists based on whether the output they produce is something I want. I do the same for AI.
I also think the question about whether AI could 'create' a new style is somewhat misplaced. A style is a cultural centroid, not just a piece of audio. AI can definitely create new musical textures or motifs, but it's always being pulled towards the form of what it's being asked to produce. As long as we're talking about systems that work like today's systems, the question still needs to involve the people that are selecting for the outputs they want. Could that connected system create something as distinct and audibly novel as a new genre? Yeah, probably, given time and a chance for things to settle. That's a different question from whether it'll do so to an inspecific prompt thrown at it.
Well, I kind of borrowed this wording from the description of your genAI experiences ("intellectually interesting").
I feel that it's nod a bad word to describe qualities of music, although it's a bit nondescript. Sure, music can be interesting, but still unpleasant etc.
But "interesting" means (to me) that the music makes you want to listen to it again.
Music doesn't need to sound pleasant. Or angry. Or sad. Or "abstract" (an oxymoron when it comes to describing a sound, still widely used).
Music is communication.
And just like it's a novelty and sometimes useful or entertaining to use ChatGPT, it's a novelty and sometimes interesting to use Suno.
That's pretty much it for me.
The magic of prompt => non-text media is also interesting, sure.
But not interesting anymore to me as art, at least not without being part of a bigger whole.
Good early example for this would be "Headache - The head hurts, but the heart knows the truth"
The way you describe music, sure, there will be an AI that is able to provide you with a continuous stream of audiotory stimuli, like the Penfield Mood Organ from "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?".
That's just not what makes art or music interesting to me, and why I also don't listen to auto-curated "mood" playlists on Spotify.
> Penfield mood organ - Humans use the mood organ to dial specific emotions so they can experience emotions without actually possessing them. In the beginning of the novel, Rick implores his wife to use her dialing console to prevent a fight. He wants her to thoughtlessly dial emotions like "the desire to watch TV" or "awareness of the manifold possibilities open to [her] in the future" (Dick, 6). When emotions can be easily avoided with the mood organ, humans no longer require personal relationships to overcome feelings of isolation or loneliness.
That being said, there is a spectrum, sure.
I am interested in generative music.
I do have scenarios where I listen to music and want it to blend into the background (e.g. soma FM).
But even then I love the short moment when a song comes up and I want to note it because it's distinct.
I am not interested in being robbed of that.
Also: why? Why, why, why?
Music is not just a recording packaged as a product. It is a thing humans do. And I say that as a person that enjoys mainly electronic music!
There are many talented humans, there is absolutely zero need for AI muzak, other than decreasing the price.
Musicians leveraging generative AI for creative purposes might become a thing and I am fine with that in principle, but the thought is a joke to me, as of now.
Creating audio from an idea is not the same as letting a machine create an interpolation of stolen ideas to match a prompt.
You can upload music and let suno arrange it in different styles. I'm a musician myself and am also interested in "interesting" music. I made experiments with my own music and was positively surprised by the "musicality" and creativity of the generated arrangements (https://rochus-keller.ch/?p=1350).
Looks like the "covers" need some better instrument isolation, but this is really huge for the music industry.
Yup totally won't mess with their algorithms.
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