AI music generators turn a typed text prompt into a complete song. Two examples are Suno and Udio. This guide sets out what the record shows about them, sorted into the good, the bad and the ugly. For the wider picture, see our overview of music and AI.
How AI Music Generators Work
Most AI music generators work in a similar way. You type a short description, such as a genre, a mood or a topic. Some tools also accept your own lyrics. The software then produces a complete recording, often with vocals.
To learn how to do this, the companies train their systems on very large collections of recorded music. The system picks up patterns in that music, such as how songs are built and how instruments sound together. It then uses those patterns to create new audio.
That training is the center of the legal fight covered below. Record labels say it copied their recordings without permission. The companies say learning from music is legal.
The Good: Ideas, Access and Paying Users
Who Uses AI Music Generators
Suno has shared its own figures. According to The Next Web, Suno says more than 100 million people have used the service. The company also reported around 2 million paid subscribers and roughly $150 million in revenue in 2025.
How Suno, Producers and Educators Describe AI Music Generators
Suno pitches its tools as creative aids. In September 2026, its chief product officer described what musicians want from its new v6-wild model. “They’re looking for a brainstorming partner, and so v6-wild is our most creative model yet,” Jack Brody said, according to Engadget.
One producer with ties to Suno agrees. “It doesn’t replace anything,” Timbaland, a producer and creative advisor at Suno, told Rolling Stone in 2024.
A Berklee professor also sees benefits. “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,” said Jonathan Wyner, a professor of music production and engineering at Berklee College of Music, according to the Associated Press.
Others expect musicians to push the tools in new directions. “Real musicians, when they encounter a new instrument or tool or plugin, they learn about it, and then they start using it in ways it wasn’t intended to be used,” Mark Simos, who has sat on the jury for the AI Song Contest, told The Boston Globe in 2024.
Labels Start to License the Tools
Deals have followed. Universal Music Group settled with Udio in October 2025. Warner Music Group struck a deal with Suno a month later. Our guide to AI music copyright covers those agreements.
The Bad: Uploads, Quality and Changing Rules
Half of Deezer’s Uploads on Peak Days
Deezer has published figures on fully AI-generated uploads, the kind of tracks AI music generators produce. Deezer said AI-generated uploads peaked in June 2026, according to TechCrunch. That month averaged 90,000 tracks per day. In addition, Deezer’s own release put fully AI-generated tracks at more than 50% of total daily deliveries on peak days.
Deezer’s CEO, Alexis Lanternier, framed the company’s response around fraud and royalties. “Deezer has been at the frontline of fighting fraud and reducing payment dilution related to AI music for almost two years,” Lanternier said, according to TechCrunch.
One Blind Test: Listeners Couldn’t Tell
Meanwhile, one blind test found that most listeners couldn’t tell AI tracks from human ones. A Deezer and Ipsos survey ran a blind test with two AI songs and one real song. Of 9,000 people in eight countries, 97% couldn’t tell the difference. The same survey found that 80% agreed fully AI-generated music should be clearly labeled.
Spotify has said it will support a new industry standard for AI credits. “We’re helping develop and will support the new industry standard for AI disclosures in music credits, developed through DDEX,” the company said in its September 2025 announcement.
What Writers and Composers Say
Writers and composers have weighed in on the quality of AI music generators. After trying Suno, Guardian writer Josh Taylor described its lyrics. “The lyrics might seem shallow and soulless, but they’re also often hilarious,” Taylor wrote in The Guardian in 2024.
Composer Tod Machover, an MIT professor of music, reacted to an AI-generated piece. “It’s so weird. It’s kind of awful,” he said, according to The Boston Globe. He then admitted he had woken up in the middle of the night humming it.
Changing Rules for Users
Licensing deals can also change what users may do. After Udio’s deal with Universal, CEO Andrew Sanchez announced a major change. “Starting today, downloads from the platform will be unavailable,” Sanchez wrote on Udio’s blog. According to the AP, the change “sparked a backlash and apparent exodus among paying users.”
The Ugly: Lawsuits and AI Acts
The Labels Sue
In June 2024, major record labels sued Suno and Udio. The complaint against Suno alleges that “Suno copied Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings en masse and ingested them into its AI model,” according to the court filing. In that complaint, the labels asked for statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work infringed.
The RIAA, which represents U.S. record labels, backed the suits. “But we can only succeed if developers are willing to work together with us. Unlicensed services like Suno and Udio that claim it’s ‘fair’ to copy an artist’s life’s work and exploit it for their own profit without consent or pay set back the promise of genuinely innovative AI for us all,” RIAA Chairman and CEO Mitch Glazier said, according to Rolling Stone.
The companies pushed back. “Learning is not infringing. It never has been, and it is not now,” Suno CEO Mikey Shulman said in 2024, according to TechCrunch. Udio answered Sony’s lawsuit in April 2026. “To the extent there is copying of copyrightable expression, that copying constitutes fair use pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 107,” Udio said in its filing, according to Music Business Worldwide.
Some of those cases have since settled, while others continue. In September 2026, Sony and Universal filed a new lawsuit against Suno over its newest models, according to Variety.
AI Acts Compete for Listeners
AI-generated acts have also reached the charts. By October 2025, at least six AI or AI-assisted artists had debuted on Billboard charts in just a few months. That count comes from Billboard’s chart newsletter.
One of them, Xania Monet, “appears to be the first AI-generated artist to appear on any Billboard airplay chart,” according to Stereogum. Earlier, in July 2025, an AI-generated act called The Velvet Sundown had “over 900,000 monthly listeners on Spotify,” Rolling Stone reported. Its revised Spotify bio later said: “The Velvet Sundown is a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction, and composed, voiced, and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence,” according to Rolling Stone.
Musicians React
Singer Kehlani objected strongly. “Nothing and no one on Earth will ever be able to justify AI to me,” Kehlani said in a TikTok video, as reported by Complex.
Before You Use an AI Music Generator
Here are questions to ask before you release anything made with AI music generators.
- Who owns the song? It depends on the plan. On Suno’s free tier, “If you are using the free version of Suno (our Basic tier), we retain ownership of the songs you generate, but you are allowed to use those songs for non-commercial purposes, subject to your compliance with Suno’s Terms of Service,” according to Suno’s help center. On paid plans, the same page says: “If you were subscribed with a Pro or Premier plan when the song was created, you are considered the owner of the song.”
- Can you copyright it? Not necessarily. Even for paid plans, Suno’s help page warns: “Keep in mind, granting commercial use rights does not guarantee copyright protection!” Our guide to AI music copyright explains why.
- Can you download and share it? Rules can change after licensing deals, as Udio users found in 2025.
- Will your distributor or streaming service accept it? Check their AI policies and disclosure rules first.
- What was it trained on? Lawsuits over training data are still open, so check whether a tool uses licensed music.
Where AI Music Generators Stand
AI music generators now have millions of users, according to Suno’s own figures. At the same time, fully AI-generated tracks top half of Deezer’s uploads on peak days. In one blind test, most listeners couldn’t spot them. Meanwhile, courts and licensing deals are still shaping the rules. Next, our guide to AI voice cloning looks at a related tool.
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Explore the rest of this series:
- Music and AI: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
- AI Voice Cloning in Music: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
- AI Music Production Tools: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
- Learning Guitar With AI: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
- AI Music Copyright: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
About the Education Team
Four music-industry veterans with decades of combined experience in music education, curation, and production at TrueFire and ArtistWorks. The TrueFire Studios Education Team plans and edits this content and works with our master-musician faculty to keep it accurate and genuinely useful.