Suno Announces $200M Funding After Warner Case Closure

0:28Happy birthday, America. You never know where your next unforgettable experience will pop up. That's why bringing along an American Express card opens the door to rewards wherever you go. Morning coffee run with an old friend? Earn cash back. Weekend getaway? Earn miles. Dinner at the hottest restaurant in town? You get the idea. No matter the place or the plan, Amex rewards your inner explorer. Learn about card options at AmericanExpress.com. Terms apply. Warner Music has just settled a copyright lawsuit with AI music generator UDO, and they've also signed a deal for an AI music platform. At the same time, we also have Suno, my favorite, personally, AI music generator, that has just raised$200 million at a$2.45 billion valuation.

1:22Today on the podcast, we're talking everything AI-generated music. There is also an AI-generated song that is hitting the top country charts. So there is a lot of craziness going on. We're going to break all of it down. Where the future is for AI-generated music. Is it something that's going to get sued into oblivion? Or is it here to stay? I think you're going to like the answer. And I think this is going to be an interesting episode for a lot of people. Before we get into that, if you want to try any of the startups that I talk about on the show, I'd love for you to go check out AIbox.ai. We have a ton of different text AI models, image AI models, and even audio AI models on there.

1:59For audio, we use 11 Labs. You get access to all of the top models for$20 a month. It is AIbox.ai, my own startup. Go check it out. Link is in the description. All right, let's get into the podcast. So Warner Music Group has just settled a copyright infringement case with Udio, an AI music company. they announced this and apparently they've entered into a licensing deal for an ai music creation platform that they're going to be launching next year they had a big press release about it and this is a quote from it they said the next generation music creation listening and discovery platform um they're essentially they're going to create and they said that it's going to have new revenue streams for artists and songwriters while ensuring their work remains protected now spotify recently announced something as well but they also haven't given too many details of what this is going to look like.

2:46I will tell you what this is going to look like. Essentially, you're going to be able to go and find artists who have opted into this, maybe Drake, maybe Kanye West, maybe Eminem. And I don't know, I just listed like rappers there. Okay, I'm sure there's going to be lots of genres. So I apologize for the lack of audio diversity in those suggestions. In any case, essentially, what you're gonna be able to do, you're going to go to an artist that's opted and you're gonna be able to say generate music in the style of this. And then you'll also be able to say. And, you know, I want like a song about XYZ, you know, maybe a song about Kendrick and Lamar beefing.

3:21And, you know, it's throw some disses at Kendrick's mom. Okay, I know I really got to get out of this rapper rut. But regardless, you get the idea, right? And so Spotify hinted at a very similar product. And essentially, you're gonna be able to generate music. And the artists whose, you know, likeness or whose sounds you're generating will get a royalty. Now, personally, I know there's a lot of people that feel different ways about this. And as someone who my wife is a music artist, and I also get over 20 million streams on Spotify a year. Few people know this about me, but I have a whole bunch of music I've been creating since I was in college.

3:58And it's, yeah, I don't publish this anywhere. It's just organic. And yeah, I get a lot of a lot of downloads on this and my opinion is that this is actually fantastic for the industry people love generating ai music i was literally generating ai music uh yesterday with my son he loves to um write like little tunes on the ukulele and then have a suno go and turn into a full-on song with a guitar and all this background music and it sounds amazing and that's like a passion for him it's a lot of fun and it's fun for me to kind of spend time with him doing that i think a lot of people like the fact that they're able to take maybe a small amount of musical talent and make it into a huge amount of musical talent.

4:40I know people that are hugely talented and can do everything themselves don't like this because they feel like it is, you know, kind of putting them out of a job. So I know there's a lot of different opinions about this. But personally, I am a huge fan of Johnny Cash, and he has passed away. And if there was a way for me to make a new album of Johnny Cash songs in his voice in the style of what he used to sing about, I personally would be thrilled. Now I know a lot of people might be mortified by that. But personally, as a fan, I would just like more music by that person. It's kind of like when you have, you know, a famous artist that has passed away in 10 years later, their estate releases, you know, the Beatles is a good example of this unreleased song, maybe it was a vocal that they had been kind of working on nothing ever happened.

5:21And they go produce and release it, the fans go crazy for we love it, because there's no other way to get more music by them. And so I think we're going to have the same effect with AI-generated music, and this is what we're going to see here. This is what Warner Music Group's CEO said about this whole lawsuit and everything going on. He said, We're unwaveringly committed to the protection of rights of our artists and songwriters, and Yu-Yi-Oh has taken meaningful steps to ensure that the music on its services will be authorized and licensed. This collaboration aligns with our broader efforts to responsibly unlock AI's potential, fueling new creative and commercial possibilities while continuing to deliver innovative experiences for our fans.

5:55I think really what's going on here, there is this lawsuit, and yes, maybe one side of it, they're protecting artists' rights from these AI music generators. I think really they want a piece of the pie. I don't really think they care too much about AI-generated music as long as they're making money from it. And I guess they can be sticking up for the artists, but they're also sticking up for themselves because they want money. But if the artists also want the money and they want it on the program, then I don't think there's a better person than their label to stick up for them and try to get them that extra money.

6:22Artists that are signed to Warner Music Group, by the way, include Lady Gaga, Coldplay, The Weeknd, Sabrina Carpenter, a ton of others. So all of the biggest ones. And I think you'll see similar plays from a lot of different labels. Here's something that the CEO of Udeo said about it. He said, This partnership is a critical step towards realizing a future in which technology amplifies creativity and unlocks new opportunities for artists and songwriters. I feel like it's so much boilerplate with these announcements, but the sentiment, I think, is actually pretty good. personally what I've seen is I have friends that are incredible singers but they're not very good with instruments and I've seen them release music on Spotify where they have all of the background production done by Suno and they put their own voice which is amazing on top of it and it is incredible and I think it's a huge bottleneck because they were telling me they'd spend thousands of dollars paying producers to mix and master and help produce the entire background and now they're able to do that themselves and because of that I know some people be like oh but the poor mixer and master.

7:19Yes, but because of that, the vocalist can now create 10 times more music. And I'm sure people are like, well, it's quality over quantity. But honestly, at the end of the day, as someone who, you know, my wife is a musician, what I've seen with her is if she can write 10 songs, not every song she ever writes is going to be her favorite song, or one that even resonates with fans. But she can write 10 songs, one out of 10 might be one that a ton of people love. And so if we could just incentivize or have the capability for artists to make way more music I think we're going to find way more good music, way more creativity.

7:52So I'm all on board with that direction as far as where these go. Okay, let's talk about Suno because this is the company that I personally use a lot. I mean, I'm sure half of their$2 million,$200 million in revenue is coming from me because I use up so many credits on this platform. And also, by the way, I have created music on Suno and posted it on Spotify and am making thousands of dollars from suno-generated music. I have a whole community where I teach people how to make money with AI tools. It's called AI Hustle School Community. I'll link it in the description below. But this is something that I actively use.

8:28And so the fact that they're able to raise at a$2.4 billion valuation and have$200 million of revenue is not surprising to me. The tool is incredible and I personally use it. Obviously not sponsored, but it's a pretty good endorsement from the fact that I'm a huge fan. Who put money into them is the question. This is a Series C, and the round was led by Menlo Ventures, you know, Tier 1 VC, and they also had NVIDIA's venture arm, N-Ventures, which got in, as well as Halwood Media, Lightspeed, and Matrix. They, you know, have some media companies, they have some Tier 1 VCs, and of course they have NVIDIA, because NVIDIA is making insane amounts of money from selling GPUs to companies like Suno.

9:06they know like suno is just gonna have to turn around and spend this money to train models and to run um they run these gpus to the inference for people to create music so it's a no-brainer for nvidia to invest in any of these big ai companies that are doing really well um they have a bunch of tiers they have like a free tier they also have an eight dollar tier a 24 a month tier um and they launched a version of suno for commercial creators back in september so you're actually able to create like music with it and commercially sell it like I mentioned I do that and I'm under their commercial license when I post music on Spotify and Apple Music and stuff so you're allowed to create music and you own all of the rights to it which is really cool previously in May of last year they raised a series b and that was 125 million dollars so it's not I mean yes 200 million is a lot but 125 to 200 million it's not like what we're seeing you know multiples like opening eyes doing these crazy billion dollar things but it's still a really massive jump um that time it was led by light speed ventures they had matt friedman they had daniel gross they had um i think like a 500 million dollar valuation so to jump from 500 million dollar valuation to 2.4 billion dollars is really really impressive and i think we're going to see this company continue to grow um i would definitely put suno as one of the top companies that will continue to make some incredible things and i think we'll probably see them strike deals similar to the one that UDO did with Warner Music Group, where they're going to start going directly to platforms and record labels so that you can create music trained off of actual artists and those artists will get a revenue split of it.

10:42Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast today. If you enjoyed the episode, make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave a review on Spotify is the about tab and over on Apple, you can go and drop some stars. I read them all. I really do appreciate them. I hope you have an amazing day and make sure to go check out AIbox.ai if you want to try out all of the top AI models in one place. Hope you have a great day and I'll catch you in the next episode. Hey guys, Lady Luck here. Are you going on any road trips this summer? I know I'm going to be going on a bunch of road trips and being that I'm going to be Passenger Princess, I love playing on SpinQuest.com.

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