How Suno Built Its Latest AI Models w/ Mikey Shulman

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1:23Mikey Shulman:Today, we are welcoming back Suno CEO Mikey Shulman to give us the inside scoop. But I will say, as our AI music reporter at Billboard, I have known that this was coming for a while. In late 2025, Warner Music Group and Suno settled their part of a blockbuster copyright infringement lawsuit Warner filed alongside two other major music companies. And as part of that settlement and agreement, Suno promised to launch models in partnership with Warner sometime in the near future. And it's also worth saying here that Universal and Sony are still pursuing this lawsuit that Warner exited. Then, just a few weeks ago, BMG, another large music company, also agreed to partner with Suno on future models as well.

2:03Mikey Shulman:And before we get into my burning questions with Mikey, of which I have many, here's a little bit about what launched today. Suno calls this launch V6, which is apparently faster and has better fidelity than previous models. Within the V6 suite of offerings, there are three models. V6, which Suno has told me is the best model for most use cases. And then there's V6 Wild for folks who are looking for an AI tool to take their music in more interesting and off-the-wall directions to spark creativity. And then there's V6 Mini, which is a smaller and slightly less powerful version of V6. And it's the only model in the suite that's available for free users.

2:41Mikey Shulman:So you can't get V6 Wild or V6 without a paid subscription. According to Suno's chief product officer, Jack Dolby, music industry partners will receive a revenue share tied to V6 for the first time. Importantly, though, Suno also announced that this is just the start. There's a phase two of this rollout, which hasn't happened yet. And I find phase two to be even more interesting. The date on that is TBD, but it will include personalized experiences for artists signed to Warner or BMG who want to opt in to have Suno users remix, sample, or otherwise create derivatives of their work. And there will be some sort of a revenue stream that opens up for artists specific to that.

3:20Mikey Shulman:And then the more your music is used, I'm told, by Jack, the more royalties are accrued. Now, I imagine you have a million questions on your mind when you hear all of this. In this conversation, I'm going to try to get as much information for you as I can so we can go beyond the press release and get to the details. Like I said, this is a special bonus episode because I got this opportunity to have Mikey come on the pod pretty last minute. But given Suno has undoubtedly become the most fast growing and controversial new company in music, we believed it was worth it. I wanted to flag that we have another special episode of the podcast airing tomorrow with music director Ray Chu.

3:56Mikey Shulman:He's worked on everything from Dancing with the Stars to Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the Grammys, Saturday Night Live, and so much more. It's a really fun conversation, so please make sure you come back and tune in for that tomorrow. Now, without further ado, let's start to my conversation with Mikey Shulman, CEO of Suno. Mikey, I wanted to start with what you think makes V6 an important launch for you guys as a company. Thrilled to be here. I would just take a huge step back and just think about what is it that Suno is here to do? Why does this company exist? I have this very firm belief that not only is every single person creative, but everybody enjoys being creative.

4:38Everybody feels really good after a half an hour of being creative versus a half an hour of doing another entertainment activity. And when we think about what is possible, doing things in partnership with the industry is really exciting. It lets us do things that would have never before been possible. And so the models that we're releasing today are V6 is what we call it. It is the best model we've ever made. It makes incredible music. We're releasing V6 Wild, which is the most creative model, which is done in much closer partnership with some of the best creatives in the world that we know. And while it may not make the perfect single song, it will come up with some of the best ideas and some of the most interesting sounds.

5:24And I am personally like kind of addicted to it. and V6 Mini, which is the best free model that anyone's ever made. But when we think about what it is that we're launching here, it's a one-of-a-kind, it's the first-of-its-kind model developed with the industry, and it will be a platform for all of the stuff that we can continue to build together with our partners in the future, products that don't exist today, products that will launch at some point in the future and actually continue to evolve. And the whole point of doing this in partnership is nobody knows the right answers of exactly how these products should look today and to be able to develop them together.

6:02And that is something that could not have happened without these partnerships.

6:05Mikey Shulman:Got it. And there's also part of this announcement is that on the roadmap, there's going to be more with your partners, Warner and BMG, in the future. So what is that about? What are you working towards? So today we're releasing just the models. And so there are lots of new capabilities that come with them. But in the future, we will be building products together or we are building products together with our partners that let you interact with the music of your favorite artist. And that is the thing that is so inspiring to people, feeling like I can co-create with my favorite artist. I can participate in music culture.

6:38I can express my creativity in ways that I could not have without being able to use their stuff. And so this is things like remixing my favorite artist's content, otherwise adapting it, sampling from it, et cetera, et cetera. really allowing people to flex their creative muscles in ways they haven't been able to before, including on our platform, which is designed entirely to let people flex their creative muscles. Okay.

7:00Mikey Shulman:So do you have a timeline for when that's going to happen? I think about this much more as an ongoing process of we will release something at some point in the coming months. It will evolve. The amazing thing about AI and making music interactive in ways that it has never been before is there's not a product. And I think we're very trained because of the current offerings out there to just think of music as a product or digital music as a product. And I think in the future, the ways in which you will be able to interact with music on different platforms really widens. And so for the first time in a long time, we'll have serious product differentiation, let's say within a platform, across platforms.

7:41And ultimately, that's really good both for users, the consumer, and also for the artists, the creative, the rights holders, and the ecosystem writ large.

7:50Mikey Shulman:Okay, so given you're saying this is in partnership with the music industry, is there compensation flowing to Warner and BMG, the first two partners that you guys have announced? It's a little bit hard to get into the specific here, but this is and will be a really important new line of business for all of our partners going forward. It will get actually easier as time goes on, especially as the products themselves get more and more defined to actually say exactly how these new lines of business will develop. Got it. Got it. Well, I spoke with your chief product officer before this call just to kind of get a lay of the land of V6.

8:28Mikey Shulman:And he was mentioning that this is a revenue share with your partners. Is that correct? That's right. Okay. Okay. So revenue share from the V6 models that rolled out today. And then down the line, You have these things that you're building towards, which will involve artist works that you can kind of remix, make samples of, all that stuff. And I imagine there's also going to be another revenue stream that appears from that, right? How does that work? It's a little too early to say, but I would stress here that there's going to be a lot of differentiation on the product side going forward. There's not just going to be one product.

9:05There will be a whole bunch of different products, a whole suite of products. They will be different platform to platform. They may be different partner to partner. And so maybe unfortunately that means that some of these business models are going to get more complicated in the short term. But actually the really exciting thing is that as that happens, the differentiation, the depth with which we can pull our users into music more, ultimately the engagement and excitement and enjoyment that our users get from the platform gets much, much larger. And so I don't think anybody has all of the answers today of exactly what these models, these business models will look like.

9:40We have, like, I would say good ideas and good guesses. And I'm mostly excited to develop the products with our partners. That has to be the thing that actually informs what the business models look like.

9:52Mikey Shulman:Okay. Okay. So when you start working towards these models where there are certain songs that you can remix and sample and that kind of thing, do artists get the opportunity to decide whether or not they want their songs to be on Suno available for users to remix? Ultimately, some stuff will be different rights holder to rights holder or partner to partner. But we are never going to have songs on platform for users to remix, interact with, otherwise adapt without rights holder consent. Okay. Okay. So sometimes like the rights holder meaning the... Sorry, without the artist's consent, the creative's consent.

10:26Mikey Shulman:Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Well, because sometimes rights holder can mean artist. Sometimes it can mean music company. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. V6 Wild. I want to get into that. Why call it V6 Wild? Who is this made for? Tell me more because this is a new line for you guys, basically. It is. It's the first time we're actually releasing something like this. Let me take a step back. I won't just give you the answer if it's for everybody, even though it is. I'll try to give you a little bit more there. I think V6 Wild will make some of the most interesting stuff that you will ever hear. but when compared to v6 if you're just comparing the songs apples to apples um v6 wild is going to take more liberties and that is going to ultimately mean it doesn't always give you the thing that you were looking for so if there's a thing that you are looking for um v6 wild may not be the right thing for you however if you are looking for peak creativity the most interesting sounds even if it's not going to be the quote-unquote perfect thing um then v6 wild is the model that you want to use.

11:33And so you can think this is done in conjunction with a whole bunch of producers and songwriters who are using this less as, how do I make this song perfect end to end? I didn't just supply it, let's say, a full song and say, redo this for me in style XYZ, but I'm using this as a creative co-pilot, as a companion for new workflows that they've developed that maybe the world knows about or doesn't. V6 Wild makes the best stuff for that use case. And so So you can think on a more local level, not the whole song, maybe a verse, maybe even five seconds. V6 Wild makes incredible stuff. As you let it maybe go a little bit longer, it's not going to be perfect for the whole song.

12:13Mikey Shulman:Okay. And I'm also wondering, since you've said that this whole V6 is made in partnership with your partners like Warner and BMG, how did you work with them to develop these? Did you get feedback from some of their artists or from the executives at the company? How did this come to be? So actually both. If we take a step back, this is a moment where with our partners, we've developed not only the model, not only the recipe for how we cook the model, but also other changes to our product that we think are incredibly important for the music ecosystem. that simultaneously will continue to delight our users, but also bring our partners, artists, creatives, more generally, a lot more comfort that the music ecosystem is healthy, that we are contributing to it in the right way.

13:08Specifically for Wild, that was done much more with some of the best creatives and really painstakingly listening to it, critiquing it over and over again, lots and lots of cycles like that, Lots of falling on your face, lots of making bad models until you kind of end with the right one. So, you know, that's like a labor of love that's actually just really enjoyable. And then, you know, the final output of this wild model is actually just even better.

13:33Mikey Shulman:Well, that's something that you and I spoke a little bit about, I think, last time you were on the show, which is that, like, developing new AI models, it's not a straight line towards progress. Like, sometimes you try to work on something and then it takes you in a totally different direction than you thought. But it's not just that progress keeps happening over and over again. You have to keep tweaking, keep refining. And you guys have said in the press release about, or the blog post, about these models that these are some of the fastest models you've made and the best audio quality. When did you guys feel like you reached this point where you're like, it's the eureka moment of we solved for speed, we solved for fidelity, all of those really, really important things when trying to make a model that is a progression from your last product.

14:23Yeah. A couple of things to say there. Just on your first point, it's very hard to anticipate exactly what's going to happen. I said lots of times we'll fall on our faces. The process for making these things is very hard to dictate. And so what I mean by that is there's not one right way to work with our partners. And you've probably seen us do lots of different things. We have long talks with executives. We hold lots of writing camps where we interact with the best songwriters who teach us a lot about how they use the product. We sit in the studio with some of our favorite producers and we learn from that.

15:00We have our Spark program where we're working with a lot of younger emerging artists who use it totally differently. And so I think by trying to be too prescriptive on exactly that, on exactly how we work with our partners, I think we end up with a worse result. By working with our partners and the industry largely in lots of different ways, actually, that is just incredibly useful, not only for building bridges, but also for understanding how these things work. I forgot your second question.

15:28Mikey Shulman:Well, I was just wondering if you guys had a eureka moment where you were like, we have just kind of solved for all of these things you have been trying to solve for for a while? You know, unfortunately not. And, you know, progress is not just a straight line. And so you rarely have a eureka moment in terms of the quality. Sometimes in terms of a capability that we can release next to the model, we will get an idea from a great creative from sitting with them and they'll say, can you do X, Y, Z? And we'll think to ourselves, I don't know, maybe let's go try. And in those cases, it's much closer to the Eureka moment of you work at it for a long time.

16:07And finally, you do figure out how to do the crazy thing that they've asked for with the model. And then, you know, you jump up from your chair and you shout Eureka. Yeah, fair enough.

16:16Mikey Shulman:Okay. So I was looking back at the press releases or blog posts or whatever you'd like to call them that were put out when you guys started these partnerships with BMG and with Warner. So Warner's dates back to 2025. BMG's is much more recent, I think like a month or two ago, really. And I noticed in it that it's never referred to in either case as a licensing deal. But yet I think that's how the music industry sees these deals. Instead, with the Warner press release, it refers to it as a partnership. And then in the BMG one, it's a global alliance that establishes a strategic framework. I'm just wondering just straight up, Are these licensing deals?

16:58Mikey Shulman:And if so, is this licensing for using their works for training? I don't want to speak to how other people may perceive the deal. I'll tell you how I think of these partnerships, which is what I said before. It's really geared toward long term development of things that could not have existed without these two parties coming together. And so whether that is products that are user facing, whether that are products that are ultimately artist or creative facing. and I think this is something I think you and I have discussed previously on this podcast. In my opinion, there aren't enough really long-term partnerships like this in the music industry where we're trying to think about what could the music business look like in 10 years?

17:41What is something that we think might actually take five or 10 years to even develop? And why don't we try to go and be audacious to do that? And there you need a lot of long-term alignment and truly to feel like a partner instead of to feel like a counterparty.

17:54Mikey Shulman:Got it. Okay. But is licensing a component of this partnership? We will be licensing works in order to do the products that we're building later on, whether that is remixing or sampling or otherwise modifying a piece of content. Got it. Okay. Yeah. And going back to that thing that is happening down the line where you're going to offer like a remix product or something where people can use existing IP and they can sample it like that kind of thing. You're saying that artists have to choose whether or not they'd like to be part of that. And I'm wondering what I mean, I imagine that it's going to be really complicated because there's going to be I'm sure you know, licensing music is complex.

18:40Mikey Shulman:There's so many rights holders at play. So like, let's say someone is signed to Warner as a recording artists and they're like, I'm gung-ho for this, let's do it. But they have a songwriter who, you know, is signed to Universal that doesn't yet have a partnership with Suno or something like that. Are you guys concerned about getting artists to opt in for this product in the future? I think like, ultimately, yes, it is very complicated in the short term. And yes, these are actually new products where exactly what combination of rights you need to give the end user, the experience that you want may not be obvious.

19:16I think a lot about where we are now and how do we get to where we need to be. The amazing thing is actually we can start small. We can start with what's obvious now, show people the engagement that it will bring to their music, show people the interactions that super fans can have, deepening that and build out from there. I am actually ultimately very optimistic that in the fullness of time, there's a set of products that we haven't even thought of today that we develop the right frameworks for how people can assign those rights and do whatever they need to do. I think in the short term, it's a little short-sighted to get hung up on, well, you don't have exactly this or exactly that, and so the whole product is dead.

20:02Like, that's obviously a little reductive. Okay.

20:05Mikey Shulman:Yeah. So also, I know there's a lot of other companies that are kind of pursuing this realm of remixing and that sort of thing. But I imagine you guys have your own vision for how that could look. How do you envision y 'all differentiating your product from the others who are also pursuing a similar path and remixing? I think that's a great question. I think the first thing I'll say is actually you use the right word, which is differentiate, which is in the future, because AI actually opens the aperture of what products you can build. there is a lot more room for differentiation than there was a couple of years ago even in terms of what digital experiences we can give people around music up to and including how you blend digital and live together which hasn't really been a thing until now.

20:51I go back to like what are the principles of Suno which is letting people feel the fulfillment that they should feel when they are creative letting people feel those warm and fuzzy feelings and I think this is a very different lens onto it instead of just having a lot of derivative content on platform, it's actually making sure people enjoy the process of making that derivative. And I think that that sounds like a subtle nuance, but it's actually from a product perspective, a really different angle at things. And so it's not just about what is that end result that may or may not be an interesting representation of the original song.

21:29It's like, how did I enjoy making that? How do I enjoy the process? How did I share in music culture and participate in music culture in ways that I couldn't have before? So I think of this as much more lean in as is the rest of the Suno platform.

21:44Mikey Shulman:Got it. Got it. OK, interesting. Well, OK, one thing that I wanted to ask you about was I know that you guys said back the press release with Warner back in 2025. In that press release, it was noted that Suno would be limiting downloads. And now as of September 3rd, that is happening. So can you tell us more about the limiting of downloads and why you guys and Warner kind of aligned on wanting to limit downloads? Sure. I think this goes back to the principles that I said before. We think it is important to grow the music ecosystem and to maintain a healthy relationship and healthy growth of that music ecosystem.