On a frosty February evening in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Mikey Shulman is spinning up a new song. Instead of picking up his bass guitar, he types a few sparse phrases – pedal steel guitar, country Americana folk – into his startup Suno’s AI music generation software.
A few seconds later, a song comes to life: fluid guitar strums and human-sounding vocals with a smooth Southern accent soar over an upbeat tempo.
The tune isn’t a chart-topper, but it’s evidence enough for why more than 100 million people have now used Suno to make music. Over 7 million songs are made on the app every day, catapulting it to the top of the Apple App Store’s most downloaded music apps – surpassing Spotify.
The lawsuit and backlash
In its early days, Suno said it trained its AI model on tens of millions of copyrighted songs scraped from the internet, triggering fierce backlash. In 2024, some 200 artists including Katy Perry, Billie Eilish and Nicki Minaj called out AI companies for training on their work without permission.
In July 2024, Universal Music Group, Sony Music, Warner Music Group and the RIAA hit Suno with a massive lawsuit, alleging it illegally downloaded millions of copyrighted recordings. “It’s a copyright chop shop,” an industry executive told Forbes.
Suno has denied the claims. “What we do isn’t illegal,” Shulman says. “It’s like listening to a lot of music and learning from it.”
The numbers don’t lie
Despite the legal battles, the four-year-old startup has become a smash-hit success. Suno’s annualized revenue tripled from 100millioninOctoberto300 million in February. In 2025, revenue was about $150 million.
VCs are sold too. Suno has picked up 375millioninfundingfromMenloVentures,LightspeedandMatrix,nabbinga2.45 billion valuation. More than 2 million users pay 8to24 per month to generate and download hundreds of songs.
Record labels are coming around
After first fighting Suno in court, some labels have started to cooperate. In November 2025, Suno settled with Warner Music and struck a deal to use licensed recordings. Warner CEO Robert Kyncl calls it a “newfound revenue” source.
But Universal Music Group remains in a deadlock. UMG believes AI-generated songs shouldn’t be downloaded and shared across streaming platforms where they compete with human artists.
The future of AI music
“I don’t want to get to a world where there’s a distinction between AI-generated music and non-AI generated music. It’s all going to have AI in it somewhere,” Shulman says.
Some artists are already on board. Rapper Thurz used Suno to create his most recent album, paying just a $24 subscription fee instead of giving up 65% of royalties for samples.
Still, fully AI-generated tracks lack human quirks and emotional resonance. As one industry executive put it: “Music is the language of emotion. Are you going to want a robot to tell you what it’s like to get over a broken heart?”
