Suno AI and Udio: Can AI Write a Hit Song?

TL;DR

Suno and Udio can generate surprisingly convincing songs from text prompts, but they can't replace the emotional intentionality of human music-making. The legal landscape is a mess. Artists should understand these tools without fearing them.

What Suno and Udio Actually Do

If you haven't tried Suno or Udio yet, here's the deal: you type a text prompt — something like 'upbeat indie rock song about late nights in London' — and within seconds, the AI generates a complete song. Vocals, instruments, arrangement, production. A finished track from a sentence.

Suno launched its v3 model in 2024 and the quality leap was staggering. We're not talking about robotic MIDI music anymore. These are songs with natural-sounding vocals, competent guitar tones, convincing drum grooves, and arrangements that follow genre conventions accurately.

Udio, which launched as a competitor in April 2024, takes a slightly different approach with higher audio fidelity and more control over generation parameters. Both platforms have free tiers and paid subscriptions, and both have attracted millions of users within months.

What They Get Right (And It's More Than You'd Expect)

Let's be honest about what impressed us. We prompted Suno for a 'lo-fi hip hop track with jazzy piano and vinyl crackle' and got something that would genuinely fit on a lo-fi playlist. The piano voicings were musical, the drum pattern was appropriately lazy, and the vinyl texture was convincing.

Udio's pop output is even more polished. We asked for a 'dreamy pop ballad with reverbed vocals and ambient synths' and received a track that, in a blind test, several people couldn't distinguish from a human-made production. The vocal melodies were catchy, the production was layered, and the song structure was textbook pop.

For reference tracks, mood boards, and creative starting points, these tools are genuinely useful. A film composer could generate rough musical sketches for a director to react to before investing time in proper composition. A content creator could get background music tailored to their specific needs.

What They Get Wrong (And Why It Matters)

For all their technical capability, AI-generated songs lack something fundamental: intentionality. Every choice a human songwriter makes — why this chord instead of that one, why the chorus lifts here, why the lyric uses that specific metaphor — is connected to emotional experience, cultural context, and creative intent.

AI music generators are pattern-matching machines. They've learned what songs typically sound like and can recombine those patterns convincingly. But they can't feel heartbreak, can't channel anger, can't capture the specific sensation of a 3am epiphany. The songs sound right but feel empty — like musical uncanny valley.

The lyrics are particularly revealing. Suno and Udio can generate lyrics that scan correctly and rhyme appropriately, but they're generic to the point of meaninglessness. 'Dancing in the moonlight, everything feels right' — technically competent, emotionally vacant. Human songwriting at its best is specific, surprising, and personally truthful. AI can't do that.

The Legal and Ethical Minefield

Both Suno and Udio face lawsuits from major labels and publishers alleging that their AI models were trained on copyrighted music without permission. The outcomes of these cases will shape the legal framework for AI music for years to come.

The ethical questions go deeper than copyright. If AI can generate music that's 'good enough' for many commercial applications — background music, content soundtracks, mood playlists — that's real income being diverted away from human musicians. The musician who makes a living composing library music or production tracks faces genuine competition from tools that can do the same job in seconds for pennies.

At Noise, our position is clear: AI music tools are technology, not art. They can be useful in the creative process — just as samplers, drum machines, and auto-tune were controversial technologies that ultimately expanded musical possibilities. But they should complement human creativity, not replace it. And the musicians whose work trained these models deserve compensation and credit.