The problem with Suno and AI music

0:02Hello and welcome to the VergeCast, the flagship podcast of the Puerto Rico song. I'm your friend David Pierce and today on the show we're talking about AI music. Specifically, what happens when you can suddenly make a song with just a prompt and then you can let other people listen to that song either on the app that you use to make it or you can publish that song and millions of others like it to every streaming service everywhere. How does that change the way we make and experience music? How does that change the music business? How does that change what music even is going forward? The Verge's Terrence O 'Brien is going to come on and we're going to talk all about it.

0:37But first, here's everything else going on on The Verge today. This is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Tuesday, July 14th, 2026. The X algorithm is a disaster and it might be about to get at least a little tiny bit better. Nikita Beer, who's the company's head of product, said that the algorithm hasn't been considering whether you follow someone back when deciding who to show your posts to. and that your friends, your mutuals, were showing up less in your replies as a result. Beer said that this turned your replies into, quote, a battleground with people you don't recognize, which is a perfect description of the X experience.

1:09Beer and X appear to be working on a bunch of changes designed to promote original content and stuff you actually care about rather than, you know, Ragebait and Elon Musk. I'm not holding my breath on any of it. Meanwhile, we've gotten a very clear look now at the next generation of Pixel and Pixel Watch. The big news here is colors. If some now-deleted Amazon listings are to be believed, at least, we're getting green, blue, purple, orange, black, and most of all, hot pink pixels. And black, silver, and two shades of gold on the Pixel Watch. Plus some cool new band colors. Listen to me. If you've never bought a cool color phone, I promise you, it's worth it.

1:44I have a green iPhone 17. I love it. And it's mostly because it's green. Finally, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed the U.S.'s first statewide moratorium on hyperscale data centers. all in order to give the state some time to figure out proper environmental and energy regulations. The moratorium is written to last up to a year, which is basically time to figure out how and whether data centers can be good neighbors. More and more people would just tell you the answer is no. You can read more about all of this at TheVerge.com. That's 90 Seconds on The Verge for Tuesday, July 14th. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome.

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2:55ServiceNow turns that chaos into control. With the AI control tower, you see all your AI across the business in one place. What it's doing, what it's done, and what it's about to do. So you stay in control. To put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. All right, let's talk AI and music. Joining me now, The Verge's Weekend Editor, Terrence O 'Brien. Hi, Terrence. Welcome to the show. Hey, David. Thanks for having me. So I want both Terrence O 'Brien, weekend editor of The Verge, and Terrence O 'Brien, gigantic musician and music nerd who currently has his laptop stacked on a pile of CDs, to both join us for this show.

3:36Do you think we can do that? I think we absolutely can do that. Okay, cool. I want to start by talking about Suno, which is the AI music platform that you've been covering a bunch over the last several months and really kind of over the last year. I think this company has become increasingly important in the music space. And I want you to start, just for people who don't know, by telling me both what Suno says it is and what Suno actually seems to be in the world right now. Because my sense is those are relatively different things at the moment. I mean, they definitely are different things. If you would ask Mikey Schulman, the CEO of Suno, he would say that it's about democratizing access to the tools of creation.

4:14It's about lowering the barrier of entry for music making. Write a song with a prompt, like hooray, great creativity, right? Like that's that's a pitch. I think Mikey Shulman kind of gives the whole game away. Honestly, he very famously quoted as saying people don't enjoy making music. And then I would just say you don't belong making music. If you don't enjoy making music, you don't have to make music. I think that's that's fine and fair. um it seems to me that a sort of my experience of suno in the world right now is less that it is a completely creative set of tools for people to make music and just practically speaking a way for people to make really similar covers of existing songs like overwhelmingly the stuff i have experienced in the world is you know and we've talked about this a bunch on the show like a blues cover of a Taylor Swift song is like a thing people want to make an experience.

5:16And that stuff is out there in the world. That I would think is not at all what Suna would like you to believe that it's about both for like creative reasons and for sort of straightforward business and copyright reasons. But that's at least how I experienced, you know, is that what you see out in the world too? Absolutely. I think like there is some of that fully AI generated, like original music and I'm using quotes for those who are listening and not watching out there. But I would say the most visible use case, the most popular use case for AI and Suno or whatever other model you want to use, UDO, is these like genre transfer covers.

5:58There's Nick Harrison. I think they call him the professor. He got very famous on TikTok and Instagram for a little while, making basically like starting out with like yacht rock covers of songs and then eventually spinning off into other genres um and sure the first time you're like oh this cover of disturbed that sounds like steely dan sure is kind of funny but how many times can you do that and you know once you start digging into like the ethical stuff as you keep doing it uh it becomes a little bit problematic i do think you could argue that most songs would sound better as Yacht Rock songs.

6:39But there's also something in that process that has tripped me up about Suno for forever is I think you can look at Suno as purely a creation service, right? Put it next to Sora and Mid Journey and all these other ways of making stuff. And I think at this point, if you want to make AI music, there are lots of ways or not Suno to do that. Suno also seems to want to be a streaming service. Like it believes in some fundamental way that what you want to do is not only create music on Suno, but listen to music on Suno. And that all of this is the new way that we think about art and music is that it will be created by AI and listened to by you.

7:24I'm guessing the musician in you hates this reflexively, but I'm curious what you think about even sort of this thesis that Suno can be one whole thought about how we make and experience music. I find that dystopian just to be like the idea that you would make and listen to music on Suno and that's your whole destination is. I think antithetical to the idea of art in general would fundamentally destroy an entire industry. Like if we want to, like, if you're making music and listening to your music on Suno, that's why do we have musicians? Why is there a music industry? Why do we have other streaming services?

8:16That's like the very broad argument against it. But I think going back to this art thing, you know, I wrote a little bit about how nobody wants to tell me about why they listen to their own AI slop. After that came out, some people did reach out to me and start to, you know, volunteer to offer some explanations. Give me a little flavor of the case people made for doing this. It allows them to create personal art. It allows them to put their experience in song in a way they might not have been able to before, for whatever reason that is. um it's a story and an argument that sounds good at first brush you know it's hard to argue with something somebody saying like well it's my art I didn't have a way to get it out there and it helps me or makes me feel heard it allows me to exercise demons or whatever and you're like well yeah I I have a hard time saying anything bad about that but I would argue that that's not the point of art.

9:18The point of art isn't to and the point of music isn't to necessarily allow you to exercise your demons for your own purposes. It's not about spitting your trauma back at you. It's about connecting you to other people. The reason you like the music you like is because that artist makes you feel seen because you relate to them. It's about building empathy and connecting with other people. If you're dumping your diary entry into Suno about how you broke up with your girlfriend or you lost a parent and then you just like type a prompt along with it like sad country song or alt rock power ballad i'd argue that it's an exercise in narcissism to a certain degree and those people wouldn't want to say that and i understand that they wouldn't like that and they probably get mad at me for saying this but what you're doing is making art for one you're not building connections and that's the whole point of art i don't know it seems it's a good distinction and i think you're making me think back to when like sora launched or when meta decided that it was going to do a whole facebook feed of just ai generated stuff and i think i in general have kind of been dismissive of most generative ai art things like i think they're they're nifty novelties that don't actually accomplish very much for people everybody seems to like make one studio ghibli style piece of art and then move on with their lives.

10:46But there was something about we want to turn this into a community experience that like it did. It felt dystopian to me. And it is like this is such a fundamental misread of what people actually want to experience with each other. And like Sora flamed out. Nobody goes to I don't even know if the Facebook AI feed still exists. Like the proof continues to be that people do not want the experience that you're describing. Yeah. That actually, there is something to making things for yourself, right? Sure. Vibe coding proves it, right? Like there are lots of people with specific creative needs for themselves.

11:23Knock yourself out. This is why I'm so stuck on, I don't buy the idea of Suno as a streaming service at all because the things that you make for yourself will never ever feel the same to anyone else because they just can't. And like every musician talks about this cool moment where you make something and then you release it to the world and it now belongs to other people. And it does seem to me that AI precludes that. Just the way in which we make things with AI tools does not seem able in a way to make that kind of connection. Absolutely. And I think, you know, digging around in like the Suno subreddit or hanging around in the Suno Discord, people talk a lot about the music they've made with Suno and they share it, but nobody ever talks about listening to the AI music of other people.

12:06Right. It's all about what I've made, what I've released, and there is no connecting. Nobody wants to listen to the other AI slop people made. They just want to listen to their own. Right. But there is an interesting thing happening there, which is that all of that stuff being made is flooding streaming services. And even if you believe that most people don't want to listen to it, and it seems like statistically speaking, this vast quantity of AI generated music accounts for a teeny tiny percentage of actual listening and that most of it is accidental or fraudulent in some way. Yeah. You still have a real problem in that all of a sudden actual artists work is about to get harder to find.

12:49And it's being buried in a just an avalanche of this AI slop that even if people don't want to listen to it as it comes on to streaming services, it is still going to cause huge problems for real artists, right? Absolutely. I think, you know, unfortunately, it doesn't seem like there is a really easy solution there. I mean, like from the user end, it seems like the easy solution is just we don't want it, so please take it away or at least let us filter it out. I would, you know, kill for a button that just let me say I don't want AI in my thing, so please just block it fully. Deezer and Kobuz have...

13:28systems in place that will identify and flag AI generated content, but it doesn't remove it and it doesn't let you filter. It just puts a little label on it. And that's, you know, thankfully, they're doing some work to like demonetize and keep it out of their algorithmic recommendations, which means people are going to listen to it less. They won't put it in their curated playlists. But let's be fair, Deezer and Kobuz are small potatoes. I mean, Spotify and Apple Music are essentially the game. And Spotify in particular seems potentially to be very excited about the idea of you and I listening to more AI generated music because it doesn't have to pay royalties.

14:08That seems like a big victory for Spotify. It does. And I think, you know, Spotify is Spotify is a weird case. Again, having been covering this and following it for a while now, in some respects, Spotify is doing more than Apple to clean up, you know, the AI spam and AI generated content from its platform. uh apple has seemed to have very little interest in addressing it at all um they've rolled out like a opt-in system where you can label it as ai or using ai if you want to but it's not actually required and it doesn't change anything on the user end as far as i know i think of those things as like pinky promise systems where it's like we we would love it if you would tell us that this is made with AI.

15:00Like, please, please be cool, everybody. And that just it doesn't accomplish anything for anybody. And Spotify is doing something similar, but at the same time, also starting to roll out some more protections for artists themselves, where they're they can require that uploaded music be manually approved before it hits their profile, which the fact that this wasn't a thing beforehand drives me insane. The fact that literally anybody could just go on and upload music to a random artist's profile, essentially, is bonkers. So they are doing some work. I would say probably not enough still, but they're doing something.

15:46But yes, they also I think are very excited about watering down the royalty distribution pool with a bunch of nonsense. Spotify has said as much that it is essentially happy to have music that is not made by and thus paid to people that like they're very clear about that. I mean, you think about like, do you remember that that whole kerfuffle about all the money Spotify was paying white noise generators and how that became like, boy, would Spotify love to just have all that be AI generated on Spotify and not have to pay anybody. Like, it makes sense. The simple business case there, I understand for Spotify.

16:25It just leads down sort of inevitably gross, weird roads. Pros trust the Home Depot for heavy duty storage solutions for any job site or garage. Right now, get up to 15 % off select storage and organization. Impact and water resistant totes and shelving built to hold up to 2 ,500 pounds. Storage systems have space for all your tools and protect them in the garage, on the job site, and everywhere in between. Save time and maximize efficiency with adjustable shelving customized to your business's needs. Shop and save on ProGrade Storage at The Home Depot. How pros get more done. And we're live from the living room as Doug eyes up the matchday spread.

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17:53Now, wait, wait, wait, you can't just walk away on that. Tell us why. I know it's still early to talk about 2028, but as we build to our post-Trump future, it seems to be a big question about the Democratic Party. Kamala Harris leads all of the presidential polling. So does this mean that the person who led the ticket in 2024 is going to lead the party again in 2028? The campaign needs to be called bye-bye by... It's just a tainted brand. Do you think from a donor community largely that there's any appetite for a Harris return? I don't. I'm Estet Herndon, and this is America Actually. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

18:35It all started with Call Me Maybe. Over 10 years ago, we created Switched On Pop to listen closer, uncovering the song craft behind even the glossiest of pop hits. Since then, we've released almost 500 episodes. We've defined the sounds of our modern soundtrack and interviewed hundreds of musicians and music insiders, including the singer of Call Me Maybe herself, Carly Rae Jepsen. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And on July 14th, Switched On Pop is embarking on a new chapter. We're stepping out from behind our microphones and in front of the camera to stream our podcast on Netflix.

19:10Now, you'll still be able to listen to the show anywhere you get podcasts, but now you'll be able to watch us each week, breaking down the sounds of the moment, digging into musical minutiae with your favorite artists, and offering questionable dad jokes, as always. We're kicking off our Netflix debut with a four-part series on the art of the song, with help from artists, producers, and songwriters like Aaron Dessner, Audrey Hobart, Trevor Horn, Cypress Hill, and Taylor Parks. Stream Switched on Pop on Netflix and anywhere you get podcasts every Tuesday, starting on July 14th. If I'm an artist right now, am I looking at Suno and tools like it as what amounts to a spam problem?

19:52Like you're saying that maybe it'll bump me down search results, but fundamentally the Spotify's and Apple Music's of the world are going to try to fight this thing? Or is this a real sort of fundamental existential creative threat to my work and livelihood? I think it is a fundamental and existential threat to your creative livelihood as an artist. You know, there again, it's some of these things that sound good on paper, but essentially guts the entire music industry middle class. because people will talk about how, well, now they'll use Suno to generate demos of songs even. Maybe it's not what they're going to release, but rather than go into a studio and rent studio time, maybe rather than hire a session guitarist, maybe rather than work with a second songwriter, they'll turn to Suno.

20:45This is a well-known and well-documented problem in Nashville. But now that guy who was making a living perhaps doing the occasional studio session and playing in a honky tonk in a bar band. Well, he's just lost a significant source of income. Right. What does he do? For the people who are at the top of the charts, for your Beyonces and your Taylor Swifts, Suno at the end of the day is an annoyance because it is, let's be clear, stealing your music. Sure. It is ingesting it and scraping it and turning it into ones and zeros for people to rearrange for their pleasure. You can make Suno generate a Beyoncé song by saying artist rhymes with shmishmance.

21:26Like, you literally can just do it. It's just sitting there. Yeah. I mean, I've proven how broken their copyright filters are. There's an article on The Verge. You should go read it about how broken Suno's copyright filters are in which there is an alarmingly accurate rendition of Beyonce's freedom. So, you know, for them, though, it is ultimately an annoyance more than anything else. And if you're at the bottom end, you are just playing shows at your local coffee shop because you like to play guitar and sing songs for your friends. It's not going to make a huge difference. But that middle class, that those people who are working, touring musicians who make a living at it, maybe not a great living, but make a living at it.

22:13They're in real danger. Let me tell you about this very specific version of this experience I've been having recently. you're not on TikTok I am not good for you I am terminally on TikTok and it's a real problem I should preface all of this by saying this is all going to make me look nerdy and embarrassing in a bunch of ways that I'm fully comfortable with do you know the Goofy movie? yes do you know the song Eye to Eye from a Goofy movie? yes so Eye to Eye, one of the all time great Disney songs Shout out to Powerline. About, let's see, when did this come out? About a year ago, Disney put out an album called A Whole New Sound, which was basically a bunch of pop punk remixes of classic Disney songs, which is a sentence made for me specifically.

23:08It's like all of my favorite things all in one album. And the very first single they put out was this group called Magnolia Park covering Eye to Eye. This song sort of had a moment. It went around. People liked it. Magnolia Park kind of had a moment on TikTok when this came out. The album did pretty well. And then earlier this year, a cover of Eye to Eye starts going viral on TikTok. Let me just play you this cover.

23:53All right, Terrence, do you want to guess who made this song? I mean, that is AI, Sudo. It is. Like, it's the moment the vocals kick in, you can tell. Yes, this is so, so very AI. This song went, like, lightly viral in one of the most fascinating ways and the thing I've seen with AI music all over social media, which is song comes out and there are two immediate responses in the comments. One of them is this rips, put it on Spotify. I need to like inject this into my vans. And then under every single one of those comments is another comment saying, bro, it's AI. It's AI. And this one was really fascinating because every time you see this version anywhere on TikTok, there will be hundreds of comments from people being like, why did you post this and not the Magnolia Park version?

24:46That one's by people. Great question. And I love this because there are a bunch of people who are like, the argument is not even necessarily that that version is better, even though it transparently is. But it becomes this argument about human music versus AI music. Like, let me just read you some of the comments on this video that I have here. And again, I picked this one completely at random. This is just a video that has this song. Magnolia Park is actually a band. AI is taking over. there are many AI bands and songs and more popping up every day. Yes, it's good. However, an actual band will always be better.

25:20And then there's a response that just says, I'll take. It's very funny. You almost had me, but it being AI ruins everything. Man, it sucks how many people are just lying to themselves saying this version is trash because it's AI. This version and Magnolia Parks version now exist. Just enjoy them both. Again, like people are just litigating AI and art in the comment section of every single one of these videos. And over and over, there are also people who are like, I hate how much I like this because it's AI. I'm just curious how you feel about this whole, we've taken a Disney song, we've turned it into something else made by people.

25:58And then we have just completely AI'd the hell out of that second thing. And somewhere in that spectrum is either the absolute future of creativity or a perfect representation of how all of this breaks and i for the life of me cannot figure out which one it actually is i i mean i think it's it's the latter i think it's the this is how this breaks uh i mean i think this is a perfect example of how you know magnolia park had this minor hit the album does fairly well but magnolia park's not playing madison square garden No. Like, this is the sort of thing I'm talking about. This is that musical middle class where, like, this is now taking, you know, money out of their pockets.

26:43And they probably actually need this. This is a band that, again, let's be clear, Spotify doesn't pay you royalties unless you cross a certain streaming threshold. It's watered down when you start doing this. And, you know, there's royalties to be paid out from TikTok. And now this has gone viral instead of their version. They're losing out on that. We can argue whether or not the technical quality is there. Like, does it sound good? I would argue no. But, you know, we can, people can agree to disagree on certain things. But at the end of the day, it's just a machine spitting out code. It's not, I don't care what your prompt is.

27:25That band had a connection to that song. Even if that connection was just as simple as, I remember that movie from when I was a kid. I loved that shit. Sudo doesn't have an emotional connection to anything. I think it's preying on people's nostalgia in a weird way that is kind of gross, kind of cynical. And I think that's the best thing you can say about it. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. And I think the more I think about this one in particular, the more I think about sort of the way distribution is changing all of this, right? Because there are a lot of people who are coming to this AI cover of I Do I and being like, oh, punk rock goofy movie covers this rules.

28:10And there is there they're not finding the better version of this that this is just ripping from. Right. And I think it's a really strange thing. And this goes back to like, is this a spam problem or is this something more fundamental that like TikTok is how we discover music now? It just is. It has been for a long time. TikTok is how music is discovered for a generation of people. And the fact that you can just absolutely flood the zone with every AI cover of every song you can possibly think of does change the dynamic in a way that is going to make it vastly harder for anyone else to get through just because they can't make music as fast as Tsuno can.

28:51Absolutely. And I think that this is one of the things that like when I talk about AI music with people who are maybe not even defenders of it, but just are at the very least less vehemently anti than I am is I think stuff like this presents as kind of innocuous. It seems like a harmless diversion. And, you know, I think there's a certain amount of it that does present as being primarily a spam problem. But I think the moment you start digging a little bit deeper, the moment you start actually like examining it, it becomes clear that it's actually a lot more than that. It is an existential threat.