Mikey Shulman, co-founder and CEO of the generative AI music platform Suno, is going through backlash after claiming in an interview that most individuals discover the music creation course of “not really enjoyable.”
Talking on the enterprise capital trade podcast The Twenty Minute VC (20VC), Shulman painted a fairly bleak image of music manufacturing, suggesting that studying an instrument or mastering software program is an excessive amount of of a trouble for the typical individual.
“It’s not really enjoyable to make music now,” he informed host Harry Stebbings. “It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software.”
“I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music,” Shulman added.
Suno’s AI-powered platform permits customers to supply songs just by getting into textual content prompts. Its CEO’s imaginative and prescient of democratizing music creation via synthetic intelligence represents a rising pressure within the music trade: the battle between conventional, skill-based artistry and AI-powered prompt gratification.
“If you want to impact the way a billion people experience music, you have to build something for a billion people,” he declared, apparently dismissing centuries of human musical custom as too cumbersome for the plenty.
“It’s not likely gratifying to make music now… it takes loads of time, it takes loads of follow, it’s a must to get actually good at an instrument or actually good at a chunk of manufacturing software program. I feel the vast majority of individuals don’t take pleasure in the vast majority of time they spend making… pic.twitter.com/zkv73Bhmi9
— Mike Patti (@mpatti) January 11, 2025
The tech exec’s claims appear completely timed to justify the AI-powered framework of Suno amid mounting authorized troubles. Suno is presently battling a pair of landmark lawsuits containing explosive copyright infringement allegations from the Recording Business Affiliation of America (RIAA), which claims the corporate used copyrighted recordings with out permission to coach its AI fashions. The commerce physique is reportedly looking for damages of as much as $150,000 for every copyrighted work
Whereas he defended Suno’s know-how as “transformative” on 20VC, many within the music trade are bemoaning his feedback for bastardizing the worth of musical craftsmanship.
“It’s very revealing,” one X person wrote in response. “The solutionist language just doesn’t make sense for art, or for other things where the work is the enjoyment, but the tech companies seem stuck in their story.”
You possibly can watch the complete interview beneath.
