AI isn’t just about writing anymore; it has entered the music industry, too. You can now generate your own songs in seconds.
I tested Suno AI Music Generator and will show you some key features, as well as pros and cons. I’ll also disclose the usage rights for your generated music.
Let’s dive in!
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links at no extra cost to you.
How to Use It and My Experience
Here’s how to get started with Suno. Go to their website and sign up using your preferred method. I purchased the Premier plan, and my review will be based on that experience.
After landing on your dashboard, start generating music by clicking on “Create”. If the “Instrumental” is toggled on, lyrics won’t be generated for the track.
Here you can see two different modes: Simple and Custom. Simple mode is, as its name suggests, very plain and functions mainly by text-to-music prompts. The Little Dice icon generates a random prompt for you, if you just want to test it out like I did here. My prompt was “120 bpm intro song about grocery store trips”.
Click on “Create” and in a few moments, your track is generated. The AI even creates a cover art for the tracks.
When selecting the Custom mode, you can do more advanced customization to the track, like generate lyrics with a prompt or add your own lyrics that will be added to the track. You can even record your own audio and add it to the track.
When clicking on the Advanced options, this drop-down menu opens up and you can modify the Vocal Gender and some other parameters.
Now, what differentiates the Pro and Premier plans from the Free plan, you can access the Suno Studio or Editor.
Here are the Song Editor (which is a Beta version at the moment) and Suno Studio. For a beginner, this might already feel a bit overwhelming, but it’s actually quite easy to use. It might be worth checking out some tutorials or reading through the article in the Help Center.
The difference between Studio and Editor is that the Editor is usable for lighter editing of a generated song. You can rearrange or adjust the duration of different blocks. The Suno Studio, on the other hand, is a full generative audio workstation for serious creators. You can do advanced AI-powered editing with it. Some production background is beneficial for getting the best out of this feature.
These lyrics to my track “Grabbing Groceries” were created with the ReMi model, which is Suno’s newest creative model and uses more creativity to generate the lyrics. You can also select the Classic model that follows your prompts strictly.
Some more screenshots of the Suno Studio. You can add, replace or remove stems, and even insert your own audio.
Then I wanted to generate a song from a completely different genre. I clicked on the Dice icon again to randomly generate a prompt for a new song, and “Light modern alternative rock song about beach days” came up.
And “Salt in the Air” was generated. This reminded me a lot of emo bands I used to listen to when I was 14.
As a complete novice in the music industry, I was quite happy with both tracks as they were, and didn’t do much editing in the Editor or Suno Studio.
Someone with a more advanced ear probably would have made some changes, as the songs were quite generic and lacked any personality.
Also, the backtrack of “Grabbing groceries” is quite hollow, but I didn’t have the skills to add any elements to it. Suno Studio would’ve been a good tool for that I believe.
Here are the finished tracks if you want to take a listen.
Pros
- High-quality music with vocals
- Easily customizable with text prompts
- Also works for more advanced editing with the Suno Studio
- Commercial rights with the paid plans
Cons
- Learning curve exists
- The free plan is very limited
- Lyrics or songs are very generic (without editing)
Pricing
Here are the current pricing plans of Suno AI, in addition to the Free plan.
- Pro: $5/month
- Premier: $11/month
Usage Rights
The Pro and Premier plans come with commercial use rights, and you own the tracks you create. If you are a Free plan user, or weren’t subscribed to Premier or Pro plans when you created a song, Suno owns the songs, but you are allowed to use them for non-commercial purposes
Can use:
- Commercial use (with paid plans)
- Distribution of songs to Spotify etc. (with paid plans)
Can’t use:
- Content created with the Free plan for commercial use
- You can’t retrospectively use content created with the Free plan for commercial purposes, even if you later upgrade to a Pro or Premier plan
To Take Home
Suno AI is a music generation tool that turns your text prompts into full songs with vocals, instruments, and lyrics. It’s easy to use and works well even if you don’t have any experience in music production. You can test it out for free, but downloading and commercial use require a paid plan. For people with more experience in producing, Suno Studio and Editor allow more advanced editing and mixing possibilities. In addition to creating your own music, you can follow other creators and their production.
Suno AI definitely stands out from other AI Music Generators with the Suno Studio. For the inexperienced user, like myself, it can take a while to get the hang of it. Suno AI also has simpler features for editing, like the Editor. You can also create music simply by text prompts.
The tracks I generated for the sake of testing were quite nice, lyrics were quite bland and generic, but those can be edited too to your liking. You can also insert your own lyrics. So overall, a nice tool that offers possibilities for beginners as well as advanced users.
Suno AI has received some backlash and a lawsuit for copyright violation, and has been accused of using copyrighted music to train its AI. Consider this if you are planning to monetize your content created with Suno AI.