Suno, a leading generative AI music company, has announced the launch of Suno Studio, its new digital audio workstation (DAW) — or, as the company calls it, a “generative audio workstation.” The product combines all of Suno’s tools for music generation into one product, including generating individual stems, editing in a multi-track timeline and starting with any audio (samples, stems, even a hummed melody) and transforming it into something new, and exporting everything as audio and MIDI.
Ultimately, the product shows that Suno is not just interested in being the engine behind songs made at the click of a button — it’s interested in rivaling longtime professional DAWs like Logic, Ableton and FL Studio as well as newer browser-based options like Bandlab. “The goal is: however you know how to express a musical idea, whether it’s through piano, through humming something, through tapping on the table, through uploading a demo, or through a list of adjectives and genres — however you know how to express a musical idea, we want to let you hear it come to life,” says Suno product manager Henry Phipps in an exclusive interview with Billboard about the new tool.
The beta version of Suno Studio is available on Thursday (Sept. 25) to all users with a Premier Plan.
To introduce and finetune Suno Studio, the company has been quietly working with songwriting camps to get it into the hands of professional musicians, including a recent one at Rick Rubin’s famous Shangri-La studios in Malibu, Calif., hosted by Frank Ocean and Jay-Z producer Om’Mas Keith. “The music creation camp I did with Suno at Shangri-La was a high-profile art meets science experiment,” says Keith.
“We’ve done probably nine or ten [camps] so far,” Paul Sinclair, Suno’s new chief music officer, tells Billboard. “We’ve got five more already lined up. We are going to Asia for the next few weeks, and there’s even more for October and November.” Producers at these camps have also included THURZ of Party in My Living Room, Rance of 1500 or Nothin’, DONUT and more.
“But we’re not running these camps. Someone will come to us and say, ‘I would like to do a writer’s camp and I would like Suno to be part of it,’” says Sinclair.
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Phipps adds, “I go to them as tech support… These are people interested in exploring the future, basically. All of these people have no trouble making incredible records on their own, they’re just interested in trying something brand new…It’s been interesting. At each of these camps, the creative in charge always has a very different way of interacting with Suno.”
“We’re witnessing a paradigm shift taking place in studios right now as AI becomes a part of more artists’ creative process,” said Mikey Shulman, co-founder and CEO of Suno, in a statement. “Studio was built to expand the toolkit for musicians; it intentionally does not prescribe workflows so that human talent can remain front and center. What’s been most inspiring for us is putting the technology in the hands of artists and watching them experiment with what’s possible, all with their creativity, knowledge and talent remaining in the driver’s seat.”
This is the latest in a string of announcements from the leading generative AI music company in recent months. In early June, Suno debuted new editing features, like its “creative slider” and stem extraction tools, to give users more control. Later that month, the company announced its acquisition of WavTool, a browser-based DAW. And in July, the company revealed that it had hired former Atlantic Records general manager Sinclair as its first chief music officer to “unlock new experiences between artists and fans.”
The major music companies — including Sinclair’s former employer, Warner Music Group — are still pursuing lawsuits against Suno and its competitor Udio, alleging that the companies have infringed on their copyrighted sound recordings on “an almost unimaginable scale” by using them to train models without a license. In early June, it was reported that the majors were in licensing talks with Suno and Udio to see if private licensing agreements could be reached.
Most recently, on Friday (Sept. 19), the majors updated their lawsuit against Suno to also include claims that Suno scraped their songs from YouTube, taking a cue from Anthropic’s recent $1.5 billion copyright settlement while citing an exclusive Billboard report on mass piracy in AI training.