Mikey Shulman, CEO @Suno: The Future of Music, What is Gonna Happen? | E1244

Mikey Shulman, CEO of Suno, argues AI music should make the industry as large as gaming by making creation accessible to everyone, not just replacing existing listeners.

• Suno’s GPU spend is several times payroll; research cluster costs are the largest expense by far.
• Suno raised $125M+ from Lightspeed, Founder Collective, Matrix, Nat Friedman, and Daniel Gross.
• Key success metric: did the user hit the paywall on their first day, not songs created or shared.
• RIAA lawsuit acknowledged; Shulman admits copyrighted works exist in training data but calls it industry-standard practice.
• Music scaling laws differ from text: subjectivity means scale alone cannot solve taste alignment, keeping models relatively small.
• Timbaland partnership is equity/advisor-based, not cash; artists widely use Suno privately but stay quiet publicly.
• Suno refused API deals with generative video companies because background music undermines their goal of making music more valuable.
• Moving from Discord bot to web app in November caused 90% of traffic to migrate in five days — Shulman calls not building the web app sooner his biggest mistake.
• Personalized artist models (e.g., an Ariana Grande-licensed model for superfans) are technically feasible; blocked mainly by label contracts, not technology.

2025-01-10 · Watch on YouTube