There’s a clip circulating of an AI executive speaking about the beliefs that drove him to create his company and it needs to be addressed.
Mike Shulman is the co-founder of Suno AI, a company that allows anyone to make music thanks to the ever growing power of artificial intelligence. I wasn’t familiar with the product before seeing this viral clip (I don’t know how as their app has 1+ million Android downloads alone), but it appears you simply type in words and it spits out a song, which is undeniably pretty cool from a tech standpoint, but I have many issue with AI’s continually expanding presence in music.
To lay out some context plainly, I view music as the attempt to express the most human (read: most unexplainable) pieces of our Being; our Being meaning the totality of who we are, the subjective and objective experiences, the easily seen and impossible to describe alike. Sure, we use tools and technology to amplify and shape these attempts but the core of music, the integral part that qualifies it as music, is the human behind it.
None of that definition I created on my own. I’ve listened to who knows how many hours of artists, songwriters, musicians, and philosophers speak about what makes music, well, music, and that’s the best I’ve been able to condense it. I’m aware it still comes short, but at least we can frame this discussion through this lens to understand just how terrible of an omen it is that this belief system is a growing and already powerful presence in the music industry.
“It’s Not Enjoyable To Make Music”
Suno AI co-founder Mikey Shulman recently sat down with Harry Stebbings on the 20VC podcast to discuss a wide range of topics but it was his beliefs about the current state of music creation which him to start the company that have gotten people up in arms online.
In a clip posted by Mike Patti, he lays out his thought process:
“We didn’t just want to build a company, let’s say, that makes the current crop of creators 10% faster or makes it 10% easier to make music. If you want to impact the way a billion people experience music you have to build something for a billion people. That is first and foremost giving everybody the joys of creating music and this is a huge departure from how it is now.
It’s not really enjoyable to make music now… it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software. I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of time they spend making music.”
Stebbings did press him a bit on this, following up by comparing the process of making music to running. Few people enjoy putting on their shoes, taking that first step, and continuing to push through burning lungs or sore feet in the moment, but when it’s all said and done, they still say they love running. Even if there was no individual moment that could be described as pleasurable, the entire experience turns out to be.
Shulman said:
“Most people drop out of that pursuit because it was hard. And so I think that the people that you know that run, this is a highly biased selection of the population that fell in love with it.”
Granted this is just a short clip of an hour plus long podcast but it’s a truly revealing insight into the tech mind that’s been infiltrating the music industry at a rapid pace over the past few years.
What Mikey Shulman Got Right
Obviously, there’s some truth in what he’s saying.
Making music is hard. Recording music is even harder. I’m by no means an expert but I play at bars, write a few songs, and occasionally head to a studio and will tell you first hand that there’s a lot of moments in that process that straight up stink. Playing the same riff over and over, singing that last chorus a fifth time because you just can’t get it right, staring at a half written verse having no clue what it’s missing, yeah man those are all rough and discouraging, no doubt.
I’m absolutely certain that there’s people out there who had something special inside of them but gave up when they didn’t naturally pick up the guitar, or piano, or whatever instrument quickly enough to match their expectations. Without question there are songs we’ve never heard, artists who never got a chance, and legendary music that was never made because the process was so difficult, there’s really no questioning that.
If you stop right there, it’s easy to make a case for some product that prevents those people from giving it up and makes it simple for them to create something to share with the world. Unfortunately, a lot of people do stop there with their thinking, not realizing the inevitable and completely obvious consequences that follow.
What Mikey Shulman Got Wrong
Ironically enough, Shulman actually described, or at least alluded to, what it is that makes music so special.
Because it’s hard to write words that connect with other beings, because it takes years of practice to become proficient with an instrument, because you have to dissect every verse, every chorus, every bridge endlessly to get it to a place where you’re happy with it, it’s intrinsically valuable.
Many people would use the microwave versus slow-cooker argument here, but I’m going to try and be a bit more specific.
Think about cooking a steak.
Sure, you can take a cut of beef, toss it in the microwave, Google how long to let it run for, and get it up to 135 degrees internally. It would be edible, it would have the nutrition your body needs to keep moving, and it would be quick. It would indeed be, technically, a steak. But I doubt anyone would honestly say it was a good steak.
Maybe you take that same cut of beef and toss it in a frying pan with some olive oil. Sure, it’s harder to do, you need to control the temperature, be more aware of the time it spends on each side, and requires you to have the ability to flip and remove it from the pan without burning yourself or ruining the meat somehow, but once that’s done, I think everyone would say that this pan-fried steak is better than the microwaved one.
Then say you get some cast iron pans, let the steak get to room temperature, and season it well in advance of cooking before doing a reverse sear, using both indirect heat from an oven and direct heat from a burner to create a nice char on the outside and a warm, pink middle. Yeah, there’s significantly more variables and ways this can go wrong. The chances you screw it up are much higher than if you microwaved it or just tossed it in a pan and it can be very discouraging to put in all that effort and wind up with a mangled ribeye. But after you do it a couple times, each attempt improving your skills and understanding of the tools and systems you’re using, and finally get that perfectly cooked, melt in your mouth steak, isn’t it pretty obvious it’s a higher quality, more valuable meal?
You can then move on to all sorts of ways to cook a steak, each with their own unique skill requirements and tools (this is where subjective taste and personal preference come in) but it’s undeniable these more advanced cooking techniques have the potential to result in an objectively better steak. They don’t automatically result in a better steak, in fact it’s a near guarantee all initial attempts will be worse than your previous results using lesser methods, but with time and discipline you’ll obtain the necessary abilities to create things in more intricate ways that produce a better result.
Let’s take a step away from “you” cooking a steak and view this from another angle.
When you go to a high end steakhouse, the beautiful porterhouse served to you is good for a number of reasons. It’s a high quality cut for starters but more importantly there are people in the kitchen that have been continually honing their steak-making skills for years. A system has been put in place to maximize the flavors, texture, and overall experience of that steak. That steak, whether you consciously recognize it or not, is more valuable to you because you know that a person with field-tested abilities and deep understanding made it. In fact, if they don’t have those skills and depth of understanding, it will be very noticeable and it’s unlikely you’ll return.
Those mind-blowing dinners that you still talk about are due to people in the kitchen putting in the time and effort for years beforehand to master their craft and we recognize that when we pay an exorbitant amount for something we theoretically could have made at home. Except we couldn’t actually make the exact thing served to us because we don’t have what the people in the kitchen have; yes, the tools, but more importantly the time spent learning the intricacies and techniques to maximize its flavor.
Humanity Is Not A Calculation
I hope you can see where I’m going with this but I’ll try to connect the dots as clearly as I can.
Music, more so than steak, is an experience, and as you know from living your life, not all experiences are equal. The depth of music comes from knowledge obtained exclusively through time and effort, through failure and success, through trial and error. There are no shortcuts to learning how to properly reverse-sear a steak and you have to be willing to ruin a few cuts to get the great one. If you become comfortable with microwaved steak, or become afraid of or discouraged by the learning curve of new methods and cookware, you’ll never have the joy of taking that perfect first bite and feeling waves of dopamine rush through your brain, knowing that you, not the tools but your knowledge of how to use them, were responsible for its existence.
The same goes with music. The songs and albums that truly connect with fans in a lasting way, ones that withstand the test of time and onslaught of new listening options, only exist because the artist took the time and did the work for it to materialize in their mind and abilities. This doesn’t mean every song has to be Lenard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, which took him about 5 years to write. The most moving song you’ve ever heard could have been written in 15 minutes but only because the artist has a backlog of life to pull from. Real life that can’t be pieced together with numbers or data inputs.
Who you are, not your job or your height or your hair color, but who you as a Being truly are, cannot be found or recreated by calculations. Believing that it’s a positive to try and strip the most basic foundation of our existence from music, which is potentially the most direct connection we have to those deep and unexplainable elements of us, rips the heart out of what music is in the first place. It’s not just sounds and rhythms and words. It’s the attempt to verbalize the unspeakable we all share.
Whether we are attempting to take the journey of an artist ourselves or are simply appreciating the work of those who have done it, the fact remains that without the pieces of each artist’s humanity that naturally imbed themselves in their work, we’re left with something that isn’t actually music, just soulless noise.
Try and get AI to understand pain and you quickly realize the whole guise of “being able to do everything humans can do but better” is a lie.
AI doesn’t comprehend the pain of breaking a leg, let alone of losing a parent, or child. AI doesn’t understand the pressure of a job interview, the frustration of a new puppy peeing in the house (again), or the stomach wrenching nerves just before you speak publicly. It certainly doesn’t understand the fulfillment and sense of purpose that is apparent and self-evident when you complete something hard, really hard. Whether it’s assembling IKEA furniture, fixing a leaky faucet, finding the root cause of a problem at work, or, yes, writing, recording, and releasing music.
Shulman is right, making music is tough. There’s a lot of parts that aren’t enjoyable, are downright time consuming, and require an amount of effort that’s non-understandable until you’re going through it. But that’s what makes music what it is and why those who make it are held in such high regard. We need to support those who take on this burden, not remove what sharpens their tools. We need to celebrate overcoming the difficulty, not take away the ability to grow, learn, and express.
Mikey Shulman’s Response To Pushback
Naturally (and thankfully) there was a lot of blowback on his comments.
Many people on X voiced critiques similar to mine but this Alan Watts quote is my favorite:
Mikey posted a response to this clip where he attempted to clarify his position:
“Watching myself on video always makes me cringe, but doubly so when I’ve expressed an idea badly. This quote makes it sound like I’m discouraging people from learning music, enjoying music, or improving their craft — I didn’t mean to and that’s my fault, not the interviewer’s (Harry Stebbings is a pro).
I’ve been playing piano since age 4 and bass since 13. I still play literally every day (I have both a piano and a bass in my office), and it brings me immense joy. I encourage everyone I know to find joy in music in their own way.
But there are two unfortunate and common cases where people miss out on the joys of making music: (a) people who drop their craft out of frustration before they get good enough to truly enjoy it and (b) people who struggle through, learn an instrument to a high level, and then drop it because they couldn’t keep up with the practice or it became stressful. How many people do you know who stopped playing their instrument when they left high school?
This is what I was referring to, not undermining the value of practice — which is valuable whether for instruments, tools like Suno, or (apparently) talking on a podcast. Music is my life, not just my job, and a huge part of Suno is making that joy accessible to more people in more ways.”
Watching myself on video always makes me cringe, but doubly so when I’ve expressed an idea badly. This quote makes it sound like I'm discouraging people from learning music, enjoying music, or improving their craft — I didn’t mean to and that's my fault, not the interviewer’s (… https://t.co/exqUs8hsIJ
— Mikey (@MikeyShulman) January 13, 2025
Final Thoughts
On one hand I understand what he’s saying and think that his intentions are at least semi-decent. It appears he actually has a goal of making music creation possible for more people, which is admirable.
But it doesn’t negate the fact that what he’s pushing inevitably results in the stripping of an artist’s essence from their music. Definitionally, an artist is one who creates art. If Suno is the one actually making the songs, how is the person hitting a few keys an artist? If anything their a machinist.
Let’s not sit here and pretend that a computer can run some numbers and spit out something approximating the human condition. Stop selling short the depth and realities of our life experience; it’s not just some mathematical or statistical amalgamation that can be solved. Stop attempting to simplify us individuals down to our most surface level, observable, and uninteresting pieces.
This is yet another offshoot of the “let’s make everything in life as easy as possible” line of thinking that’s omnipresent in our culture. Sure, there’s some things that can and should be made easier, no one will question that. But what if working at and overcoming the challenges of doing extremely hard things is an integral piece of what is means to be a human on this planet? What if by trying to make everything easier we are actually making life harder by removing the fight which leads to happiness?
Everyone already has the opportunity to make as much music as they want, but there’s an entry fee that has to be paid. You have to be willing to work, and practice, and play the same beginner songs over and over again to get to a point where creation, experimentation, and, most importantly, quality can be found. It’s not a bad thing that everybody on the planet can’t make and release music the very second they get the urge too. A system that allows anybody at anytime to create and release music will only drown actual art by flooding the marketplace with nonsense. As fewer people listen to truly powerful, moving, and connective pieces of music, our collective humanity drops. We start to become the things we have created, rather than using what we’ve created to become more of ourselves.
Real music matters, Mr. Shulman. Few, if anything, connect us to the parts of us we know exist but don’t understand better than genuine, humanmade music, and we need to stand up and protect it, because the vultures are circling in plain sight.
Here’s the entire podcast episode if you’re interested.
