Suno CEO revises comments on music creation, outlines AI platform plans

In a recent interview with Billboard, Shulman said: “I really wish I had chosen different words. I do have a lot of respect for music.”

His previous comments, made during an appearance on the 20VC podcast, had attracted criticism. At the time, Shulman had argued that music creation is often time-consuming and requires significant practice to master instruments or production software.

Shulman did not expand on those earlier thoughts but instead discussed the future direction of Suno. He outlined plans to develop a “verticalized” service combining a social feed, called Hooks, with a streaming platform and music production tools aimed at a broad range of users. “When we talk about ‘verticalizing’ inside the company, it’s not like we want to smush TikTok and Spotify together,” he said. “Those two things already exist, and that’s not going to reap a lot of benefits.”

He added: “I’m thinking, ‘How do I make discovery way better than it is now?’ Because we are able to do something no one else can do. [The point of Hooks] is to get you off of the feed, playing with content and remixing it. That’s the kind of discovery that doesn’t exist right now.”

Shulman also addressed Suno’s licensing agreement with Warner Music Group (WMG) reached in November 2025, which involved retiring its existing AI model and launching a new one trained exclusively on licensed content. “The major labels are very important, but what we did is legal, and so that’s what we did,” he said. “I don’t think of what we did as a settlement. I think about this much more like a partnership […] It is much more long-term.”

The company’s next AI model, trained on licensed content from rights holders who opted in, is expected to launch later this year.