Photo Credit: Igor Omilaev
Suno CEO Mikey Shulman says his company offers an efficiency many professionals across the music industry are already using but are reluctant to admit.
Rapidly growing AI music company Suno is now valued at around $2.45 billion, having attracted major Silicon Valley investment over its ability to generate full songs from simple text prompts. In a new interview, CEO Mikey Shulman explains why he believes his company represents the future of music, rather than a threat to its very existence—describing Suno as “the Ozempic of the music industry,” positing that “everybody’s on it [but] nobody wants to talk about it.”
According to Shulman, Suno is designed not as a replacement for artists but as a “tool” that makes music creation more accessible, speeds up workflows, and allows people to “play with” music rather than just play it. He argues that technology has always driven musical change, from drum machines to digital audio workstations—and insists that even in the AI era, those who want to make the “best music in the world” will still need to spend thousands of hours honing their craft.
It’s worth pointing out that Suno has only agreed to a deal with Warner Music Group, and litigation with the other major labels is still very much alive and well. Shulman has claimed that Suno trains its models on “medium- and high-quality music we can find on the open internet.” He has sort of skirted around the issue of copyright on the “open internet,” calling it “a different thing” and explaining that he couldn’t get into too many specifics due to ongoing legal issues.
Suno’s primary strategy going forward is to neutralize legal and reputational risk by striking licensing deals with more major rights holders, with its high-profile agreement with Warner Music presented as a template for coexistence between labels and AI firms. Still, the specifics of that deal remain opaque, which remains a concern for creatives and rights holders alike.
On the topic of whether Suno and its ilk will ultimately flood streaming platforms with “AI slop” and erode the perceived value of music—making it harder for authentic human artists to stand out—Shulman counters that the definition of “AI slop” is subjective.
“I made a really funny song with my four-year-old yesterday morning. That is ‘slop’ to you—you don’t care about it—but I love it. It’s fantastic,” he said, stressing that music generated by Suno can be “extremely high quality.”
But the personal worth of a given track doesn’t negate the reality of AI-powered music flooding the market.
French streaming service Deezer claims that more than a third of music delivered to its platform each day is AI (the equivalent of around 50,000 tracks), and 70% of streams of AI music on Deezer are fraudulent, meaning bots are employed to manipulate streams for royalty payouts. Deezer has started tagging AI tracks to alert otherwise unsuspecting users. Meanwhile, Bandcamp recently announced its move not to platform music generated “wholly or in substantial part” by AI.
