Founded in 2023 by a group that included several AI researchers from Google, the startup now employs about 25 people. It has fewer users and raised less venture capital than Suno, which likely gave Udio a stronger incentive to be first to settle with record labels, said copyright lawyer Brandon Butler.
“A service (like Suno) that’s gets more venture backing is in some sense hungrier to find revenue streams and more on the hook to all those backers to make sure that they achieve profitability, which would make settling and compromising less attractive,” said Butler, director of the copyright advocacy group Re:Create. “Whereas a company with fewer backers, with less capital, with less access would be weaker and less able to resist the risk that they’re incurring by being involved in litigation.”
Still, Udio embraces its underdog status.
“So many tech companies actively cultivate this I-am-a-tech-company-crusader and that’s part of their identity,” Sanchez said. “That alienates people who are creative and I am uniformly opposed to that.”
Sanchez said he knows not every artist is going to embrace AI, but he hopes those who leave the room after talking with him realize he’s not imposing a kind of “AI bravado.”
“If you took what we’re doing and pretended that the word AI wasn’t a part of it, people would be like, ‘Oh my gosh. This is so cool.’”
Some see potential in AI-assisted music creation
In the basement office of his Philadelphia, Mississippi home, Christopher “Topher” Townsend is a one-man band, making and marketing Billboard-chart-topping gospel music — none of which he sings himself — and doing it in record time.
The rapper, whose lyrics reflect his political conservatism, downloaded Suno in October and, within days, created Solomon Ray, a fictional singer that Townsend calls an extension of himself.
Townsend uses ChatGPT to write lyrics, Suno to generate songs and other AI tools to create cover art and promotional videos under the Solomon Ray name.
“I can see why artists would be afraid,” Townsend said. ”(Solomon Ray) has an immaculate voice. He doesn’t get sick. You know, he doesn’t have to take leave, he doesn’t get injured and he can work faster than I can work.”
Trying to dispel that fear for aspiring artists is Jonathan Wyner, a professor of music production and engineering at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, who sees generative AI as just another tool.
“To the creative musician, AI represents both enormous potential benefits in terms of streamlining things and frankly making kinds of music-making possible that weren’t possible before, and making it more accessible to people who want to make music,” he said.
Such a vision remains a tough sell for artists who feel their work has already been exploited. Merritt says she’s particularly concerned about labels making deals with AI companies that leave out independent artists. An open letter she co-signed this week says “many in our community are embracing responsible AI as a tool for creation” but targets Suno as a “smash and grab” business that artists should avoid.
“Artists need to know the difference – all AI platforms are not the same, and Suno, which is being sued for copyright infringement, is not a platform artists should trust,” says the letter from Merritt and six others.
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O’Brien reported from Cambridge, Massachusetts and New York. Ngowi reported from Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts. AP journalists Sophie Bates in Philadelphia, Mississippi and Allen G. Breed in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.