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Comment by tummler | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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-podcas...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Reminds me of the saying about propaganda that argues it's not about convincing, but about drowning out the rest.

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.

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.

That's the same process as AI-assisted coding. Or AI-assisted writing. Or AI-assisted anything.

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.

People like different things, obviously? Boring is very subjective.

With art and AI, people seem to enjoy the part where they say they made something and get credit for it, but didn’t actually have to bother. People used to find art of people on the internet and claim it as their own, now an AI can statistically generate it for you and it maybe feels a bit less icky. Though I have to agree it all seems sort of pointless, like buying trophies for sports you didn’t play.

Music is math. Art is patterns. Like how we're using AI to iterate through design and code, musicians could use it for generating musical patterns including chords, harmonies, melodies, and rhythms. In theory, it can pull up and manipulate instruments and effects based on description rather than rifling through file names and parameters (i.e. the boring stuff).

Most success as a musician stems from developing a unique style, having a unique timbre, and/or writing creative lyrics. Whether a coder, designer, artist, or musician, the best creatives start by practicing the patterns of those who came before. But most will never stand out and just follow existing patterns.

AI is nothing more than mixing together existing patterns, so it's not necessarily bad. Some people just want to play around and get a result. Others will want to learn from it to find their own thing. Either way works.

"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.

> 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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?

> And look at the vocaloid stuff too.

What about the vocaloid stuff?

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.

Surely it's no more soulless than a song without words at all?

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.

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.

The contention that there is something so ethereal, uncapturable, so uniquely and indescribably human that is put into even the blandest piece of mass-market pop that an AI trained on all the music ever made couldn’t create a track that people would accept due to some intangible hollowness, some void where the inestimable quintessence of human existence should be…

That’s hilarious.

I’m not saying it’s not ‘art’ whatever that might mean, I am saying this idea that people won’t accept and enjoy an AI version is a fantasy.

It might be "soulless" compared to real vocal, but vocaloid music is still created and played on keyboard by a human.

I do care, in fact I started bying vinyl and CDs again. I will not consume AI slop.

Wait until you dive into the Suno community to discover some people got signed by labels and are publishing CDs and vinyls…

Honestly it sounds like AI generated music will just widen the bimodal distribution: those who care about craft and authenticity on one end, and a race to the bottom on the other. Everything in the middle will be squeezed.

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.

> 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.

> 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....

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