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Suno is moving toward becoming a browser-based DAW that happens to use AI. There are already more capable and established DAWs, and I see no reason they can't i

Suno is moving toward becoming a browser-based DAW that happens to use AI. There are already more capable and established DAWs, and I see no reason they can't implement AI into their workflows-- in a more precise manner, where it's actually useful, instead of wholesale as a gimmick. Many are already doing this. So I don't understand where Suno is going with any of this. It either needs to be: 1. So easy anyone can press a button and magically get exactly what they want with perfect accuracy and quality. 2. So robust and powerful it enables new kinds of music production and super-charges human producers. This is neither. And I don't buy Suno's argument that they're solving a real problem here. Creative people don't hate the process of creating art-- it's the process itself and the personal expression that make it worthwhile. And listeners/consumers can tell the difference between art created with intent and soul, and a pale imitation of that.

raincole 1y ago
All you said is very reasonable. But then you look at image gen. The established one, namely Adobe, are surprisingly not winning the AI race. Then you look at code gen. The established IDEs are doing even worse. I don't rule out the possibility of music being truly special, but the idea of "established tools can just easily integrate AI right" isn't universally true.
- tummler 1y ago
  The innovator's dilemma is real. IMO none of the big DAWs are well-positioned to capitalize on AI, but that doesn't mean they couldn't. I'd argue music generation is different from image or code generation. It's closer to being purely art. Take image generation for example. Most of the disruption is coming from competition with graphic design, marketing, creative/production processes, etc. The art world isn't up in arms about AI "art" competing with human art.
  - leobuskin 1y ago
    It does mean. The switch from writing “applicable” software to creating cutting edge AI is almost impossible. The parent comment makes great examples, we can add to that list JetBrains (amazing IDEs, zero ability to catch up with ML), for example. It’s a very different fast-paced scientific driven domain.
- danielvaughn 1y ago
  Agreed. The problem with being an incumbent in this era is that much of the existing UI/UX assumptions are based on the idea of manual manipulation. We're so early that foundational assumptions are still up for debate, and for large companies like Adobe, there's just no way they'd be able to move at the required pace to keep up. Heck I'm at a company that's less than 2 years old, with less than 20 people, solely devoted to AI, and it's still hard for us to keep up. What Adobe and others ought to be doing is setting up internal labs that have free reign to explore whatever ideas they want, with no barriers or formality. I doubt any of them will do that.
jsheard 1y ago
> It either needs to be: 1. So easy anyone can press a button and magically get exactly what they want with perfect accuracy and quality. 2. So robust and powerful it enables new kinds of music production and super-charges human producers. Don't forget the secret third option - facilitate a tidal wave of empty-calorie content which saturates every avenue for discovery and "wins" purely by drowning everything else out through sheer volume. We're at the point where some genAI companies are all but admitting that's their goal. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/ai-podcast-start-up-plan-shows-1236361367/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/ai-podcas...
- Gigachad 1y ago
  That seems to be the purpose. It doesn’t have to sound that good to the listener. It’s just made to extract dollars from Spotify when you flood the platform with so much slop that some of it starts getting played by users who just let the machine pick the next song.
- _DeadFred_ 1y ago
  I gave up on synthwave which was a genre I loved because there's so much AI it just not worth the effort to find new music. I'll listen to old songs but I have zero interest in new songs. I moved to a more niche genre where there's no AI yet.
  - karakot 1y ago
    same, I listen to a synthwave playlist on spotify, and once it ends spotify starts playing 'similar' music and at that point I just start feeling gross.
- suyash 1y ago
  This tidal wave has already destroyed the gaming industry, lot's of low quality AI slop games have flooded App Stores, STEAM etc leaving both gamers and creators frustrated.
- unglaublich 1y ago
  Reminds me of the saying about propaganda that argues it's not about convincing, but about drowning out the rest.
zubzubi 1y ago
Yes I'm already doing this manually with Reason. I'll compose something that's quite bare bones, export the audio and run it through Suno, asking it to cover and improvise with a specific style, then when I have something I like, I split that into stems, import some or all of these to Reason and then reconstruct and enhance the sound using instruments in Reason, mostly by replaying the parts I like on keyboard and tweaking it in the piano roll. Often I get additional inspiration just by doing that. Eventually I delete all the tracks that came from Suno stems when I've finished this process. That way I get new musical ideas from Suno but without any trace of Suno in the final output. Suno's output, even with the v5 model, is never quite what I want anyway so this way makes most sense to me. Also it means there's no Suno audio watermarking in the final product.
- tummler 1y ago
  This is similar to what I do. There are all kinds of useful ways to incorporate AI into the music production process. It should be treated like a collaborative partner, or any other tool/plugin. It shouldn't be a magic button that does everything for you, removing the human element. A human consciously making decisions with intent, informed by life experience, to share a particular perspective, is what makes art art.
- jjmarr 1y ago
  That's the same process as AI-assisted coding. Or AI-assisted writing. Or AI-assisted anything.
  - _DeadFred_ 1y ago
    We use AI assisted coding to be more productive or to do boring stuff. If the 'making the music' part is what you are getting away from, why make music? You're basically a shitty 'producer' (decent producers are amazing at those boring parts you are skipping and can fill out a track without hitting up a robot) at that point.
    - bubblyworld 1y ago
      People like different things, obviously? Boring is very subjective.
zahlman 1y ago
> Creative people don't hate the process of creating art I mean, I hate when it's difficult to get the medium to express my vision... not that AI especially would help with that when I'm actually attached to that vision in detail....
boredemployee 1y ago
"Creative people don't hate the process of creating art" Yep. I was a professional music producer before the pandemics, and I couldn't agree more. Honestly, I'm glad we are destroying every way possible to earn money with music, so we find another profession for that purpose and then we can make music for fun and love again.
Nursie 1y ago
> And listeners/consumers can tell the difference between art created with intent and soul, and a pale imitation of that. Respectfully I disagree. We have had curated, manufactured pop, built by committee and sung by pretty mouthpieces with no emotional connection, for a long time now, and they make big money. And look at the vocaloid stuff too. Those who care, care. Everyone else?
- creata 1y ago
  > And look at the vocaloid stuff too. What about the vocaloid stuff?
  - Nursie 1y ago
    It’s soulless by definition, designed by committee and sung by a machine. Entirely manufactured. But people like it. It’s a counterpoint to the above argument that listeners will be dismissive of AI-produced music because it is a pale imitation of art created with intent and soul. On the contrary, such music thrives and is very popular already.
    - npinsker 1y ago
      Surely it's no more soulless than a song without words at all?
    - otabdeveloper4 1y ago
      AI "music" sounds like ass. The Temu of sonic products. It will sell, but only in niche markets. Traditionally manufactured pop "music" is a more upscale and widely applicable market position.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - tummler 1y ago
      People love to be snobs about pop music, but it's music. A particular piece of art isn't "soulless" just because it didn't move you. There were still plenty of humans involved in making it, who made specific artistic decisions. In pop music, the creative decisions are often driven by a desire to be as broadly appealing as possible. That's not a good or bad thing unless you judge it as such. It's still art.
lz400 1y ago
> And listeners/consumers can tell the difference between art created with intent and soul, and a pale imitation of that. Strong disagree there. I think that's true of a very small % of consumers nowadays. I mean, total honesty, I think that Suno is not worse than a large fraction of the commercial pop made by humans (maybe) that tops the charts regularly. It's already extremely formula based artificial music made by professional hit makers from Sweden or Korea. The objective was never to grab discerning listeners but the mass of people. It would work even if they grab 50% but honestly I think it's going to be higher.
- codedokode 1y ago
  The difference between human and computer music would be obvious at a live concert for anyone.
int_19h 1y ago
> And listeners/consumers can tell the difference between art created with intent and soul, and a pale imitation of that. Um, have you seen the pop charts at any time in the past... well, since forever, actually? The majority of commercially produced music today is created with intent to take your money and nothing else, with performers little more than actors lip-syncing to the same tired beat. Because it sells.
rldjbpin 1y ago
there is a clear market share to be gained if they release it for free plan as "promised". they can be (albeit web-based) the "davinci resolve" of DAW, regardless of whether the AI features be bundled away for the paid plans.

raincole 1y ago

All you said is very reasonable. But then you look at image gen. The established one, namely Adobe, are surprisingly not winning the AI race. Then you look at code gen. The established IDEs are doing even worse. I don't rule out the possibility of music being truly special, but the idea of "established tools can just easily integrate AI right" isn't universally true.

tummler 1y ago
The innovator's dilemma is real. IMO none of the big DAWs are well-positioned to capitalize on AI, but that doesn't mean they couldn't. I'd argue music generation is different from image or code generation. It's closer to being purely art. Take image generation for example. Most of the disruption is coming from competition with graphic design, marketing, creative/production processes, etc. The art world isn't up in arms about AI "art" competing with human art.
- leobuskin 1y ago
  It does mean. The switch from writing “applicable” software to creating cutting edge AI is almost impossible. The parent comment makes great examples, we can add to that list JetBrains (amazing IDEs, zero ability to catch up with ML), for example. It’s a very different fast-paced scientific driven domain.
danielvaughn 1y ago
Agreed. The problem with being an incumbent in this era is that much of the existing UI/UX assumptions are based on the idea of manual manipulation. We're so early that foundational assumptions are still up for debate, and for large companies like Adobe, there's just no way they'd be able to move at the required pace to keep up. Heck I'm at a company that's less than 2 years old, with less than 20 people, solely devoted to AI, and it's still hard for us to keep up. What Adobe and others ought to be doing is setting up internal labs that have free reign to explore whatever ideas they want, with no barriers or formality. I doubt any of them will do that.

jsheard 1y ago

> It either needs to be: 1. So easy anyone can press a button and magically get exactly what they want with perfect accuracy and quality. 2. So robust and powerful it enables new kinds of music production and super-charges human producers. Don't forget the secret third option - facilitate a tidal wave of empty-calorie content which saturates every avenue for discovery and "wins" purely by drowning everything else out through sheer volume. We're at the point where some genAI companies are all but admitting that's their goal. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/ai-podcast-start-up-plan-shows-1236361367/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/ai-podcas...

Gigachad 1y ago
That seems to be the purpose. It doesn’t have to sound that good to the listener. It’s just made to extract dollars from Spotify when you flood the platform with so much slop that some of it starts getting played by users who just let the machine pick the next song.
_DeadFred_ 1y ago
I gave up on synthwave which was a genre I loved because there's so much AI it just not worth the effort to find new music. I'll listen to old songs but I have zero interest in new songs. I moved to a more niche genre where there's no AI yet.
- karakot 1y ago
  same, I listen to a synthwave playlist on spotify, and once it ends spotify starts playing 'similar' music and at that point I just start feeling gross.
suyash 1y ago
This tidal wave has already destroyed the gaming industry, lot's of low quality AI slop games have flooded App Stores, STEAM etc leaving both gamers and creators frustrated.
unglaublich 1y ago
Reminds me of the saying about propaganda that argues it's not about convincing, but about drowning out the rest.

zubzubi 1y ago

Yes I'm already doing this manually with Reason. I'll compose something that's quite bare bones, export the audio and run it through Suno, asking it to cover and improvise with a specific style, then when I have something I like, I split that into stems, import some or all of these to Reason and then reconstruct and enhance the sound using instruments in Reason, mostly by replaying the parts I like on keyboard and tweaking it in the piano roll. Often I get additional inspiration just by doing that. Eventually I delete all the tracks that came from Suno stems when I've finished this process. That way I get new musical ideas from Suno but without any trace of Suno in the final output. Suno's output, even with the v5 model, is never quite what I want anyway so this way makes most sense to me. Also it means there's no Suno audio watermarking in the final product.

tummler 1y ago
This is similar to what I do. There are all kinds of useful ways to incorporate AI into the music production process. It should be treated like a collaborative partner, or any other tool/plugin. It shouldn't be a magic button that does everything for you, removing the human element. A human consciously making decisions with intent, informed by life experience, to share a particular perspective, is what makes art art.
jjmarr 1y ago
That's the same process as AI-assisted coding. Or AI-assisted writing. Or AI-assisted anything.
- _DeadFred_ 1y ago
  We use AI assisted coding to be more productive or to do boring stuff. If the 'making the music' part is what you are getting away from, why make music? You're basically a shitty 'producer' (decent producers are amazing at those boring parts you are skipping and can fill out a track without hitting up a robot) at that point.
  - bubblyworld 1y ago
    People like different things, obviously? Boring is very subjective.

zahlman 1y ago

> Creative people don't hate the process of creating art I mean, I hate when it's difficult to get the medium to express my vision... not that AI especially would help with that when I'm actually attached to that vision in detail....

boredemployee 1y ago

"Creative people don't hate the process of creating art" Yep. I was a professional music producer before the pandemics, and I couldn't agree more. Honestly, I'm glad we are destroying every way possible to earn money with music, so we find another profession for that purpose and then we can make music for fun and love again.

Nursie 1y ago

> And listeners/consumers can tell the difference between art created with intent and soul, and a pale imitation of that. Respectfully I disagree. We have had curated, manufactured pop, built by committee and sung by pretty mouthpieces with no emotional connection, for a long time now, and they make big money. And look at the vocaloid stuff too. Those who care, care. Everyone else?

creata 1y ago
> And look at the vocaloid stuff too. What about the vocaloid stuff?
- Nursie 1y ago
  It’s soulless by definition, designed by committee and sung by a machine. Entirely manufactured. But people like it. It’s a counterpoint to the above argument that listeners will be dismissive of AI-produced music because it is a pale imitation of art created with intent and soul. On the contrary, such music thrives and is very popular already.
  - npinsker 1y ago
    Surely it's no more soulless than a song without words at all?
  - otabdeveloper4 1y ago
    AI "music" sounds like ass. The Temu of sonic products. It will sell, but only in niche markets. Traditionally manufactured pop "music" is a more upscale and widely applicable market position.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - tummler 1y ago
    People love to be snobs about pop music, but it's music. A particular piece of art isn't "soulless" just because it didn't move you. There were still plenty of humans involved in making it, who made specific artistic decisions. In pop music, the creative decisions are often driven by a desire to be as broadly appealing as possible. That's not a good or bad thing unless you judge it as such. It's still art.

lz400 1y ago

> And listeners/consumers can tell the difference between art created with intent and soul, and a pale imitation of that. Strong disagree there. I think that's true of a very small % of consumers nowadays. I mean, total honesty, I think that Suno is not worse than a large fraction of the commercial pop made by humans (maybe) that tops the charts regularly. It's already extremely formula based artificial music made by professional hit makers from Sweden or Korea. The objective was never to grab discerning listeners but the mass of people. It would work even if they grab 50% but honestly I think it's going to be higher.

codedokode 1y ago
The difference between human and computer music would be obvious at a live concert for anyone.

int_19h 1y ago

> And listeners/consumers can tell the difference between art created with intent and soul, and a pale imitation of that. Um, have you seen the pop charts at any time in the past... well, since forever, actually? The majority of commercially produced music today is created with intent to take your money and nothing else, with performers little more than actors lip-syncing to the same tired beat. Because it sells.

rldjbpin 1y ago

there is a clear market share to be gained if they release it for free plan as "promised". they can be (albeit web-based) the "davinci resolve" of DAW, regardless of whether the AI features be bundled away for the paid plans.