Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:13:09 · Mikey Shulman
[00:13:09] S0: A lot to say here. So I think of us as we are trying to build the next set of super engaging digital experiences around music. We are trying to make music a much bigger part of your life than it is today. Music has a particular place and culture, and that is different from other forms of media. And it is only for lack of imagination that tonight you're gonna go home and instead of watching Netflix, why wouldn't you do something around music? And we are best known for giving everybody the ability to create, and that is one of the most engaging and valuable experiences that people can have. But it's actually much more than that in the grand scheme of things. And I think about this really as if we are doing our jobs right, eventually, will stop talking about creation and consumption differently, and we will just be saying, like, I'm going to go and do music. I'm very struck, you know, as a kid, I I... So I grew up playing in a lot of bands in high school and college, and some of the most fun I think I've ever had is just making music with my friends. And it is trying to bring those feelings digitally to billions of people that is what gets everybody here out of bed in the morning. You are right at the beginning. You may even remember we said we would need a 100 times more compute to be able to produce good audio. And so we thought that that was years away, and then a couple months later, we turned around and said, just kidding. I think we can do it now. And so that is the... You know, that research breakthrough, honestly, was the seed that got the whole thing started down the path that we are now. But I think if you zoom out, the thing that we really realized is that a, audio is everywhere. It is... It's like, you know, you can shut your eyes. You can't shut your ears. And the amount of audio produced and consumed is immense. But b, in the world of machine learning, audio is like a bit of a backwater, or it certainly was in 2022.
00:15:11 · Alexa von Tobel, Mikey Shulman
[00:15:11] S1: Absolutely. [00:15:12] S0: We realized like it is it it is only for stupid reasons that audio isn't like a first class citizen in machine learning. And we said like, why don't we why don't we try to make it a first class citizen? Why don't we make audio be as good and as important as we think it should be? And that is the thing that got us started down that path. That is the thing that made us realize that we thought it would be too hard to make good music, and that is ultimately the thing that drove us to, like, push through that barrier and and make that research breakthrough and be able to do it. And the rest is sort of history. [00:15:42] S1: Let's talk a little bit about just sort of the idea that a moment to be like, everyone is running over text and content, LLMs. Let's go do audio. And you're absolutely right. There was nobody, near to nobody, focusing on it. Where did that insight come from? [00:16:01] S0: Honestly, I think it's just because we liked it. We, like... We were doing a little bit. Maybe 10 of what we were doing at S and P was audio related around earnings call transcription. And we just realized, like, this is messy and annoying, but we freaking love it. And so it was... It wasn't... I don't know if there was, like, a first principles thing. It was, like, just this realization that, like, we will keep doing this, and we like it, and no one else likes doing it, and this can be very, very big, and everybody's just, you know, overlooking this maybe because it's less sexy somehow than than text. And I think that proved true in the long run.
00:16:01 · Mikey Shulman, Alexa von Tobel
[00:16:01] S0: Honestly, I think it's just because we liked it. We, like... We were doing a little bit. Maybe 10 of what we were doing at S and P was audio related around earnings call transcription. And we just realized, like, this is messy and annoying, but we freaking love it. And so it was... It wasn't... I don't know if there was, like, a first principles thing. It was, like, just this realization that, like, we will keep doing this, and we like it, and no one else likes doing it, and this can be very, very big, and everybody's just, you know, overlooking this maybe because it's less sexy somehow than than text. And I think that proved true in the long run. [00:16:37] S1: Got it. Let's quickly talk. So for those who are not part of the now 100,000,000 plus users of Suno, which is incredible growth by the way. I you've gone from zero in revenue when we invested to 200,000,000 plus and and I'm sure that number is already changed. A few quick stats because this is crazy. Suno was founded. I really call it 2022 released to the public in 2023, and in less than three years, 7,000,000 tracks are generated a day. And, obviously, you just raised it almost a $2,500,000,000 valuation. What's happening, Mikey? Like, let's just start. What is happening?
00:17:20 · Mikey Shulman
[00:17:20] S0: A lot is happening. I think slowly people are realizing that music is special and can be a bigger part of their lives. And I think that... I see a lot of AI products that present themselves as party tricks. It's like I can do this thing and it looks really cool, and maybe I'll try it three times and I'll never do it again. And what has happened in the last two years is we've slowly graduated, I would say, from a party trick where you can type a few words into a text box and out comes a song that is like, okay, to backing that up with this incredible experience that you wanna keep doing and doing. And so what happens is people experience that party trick, they realize there's a lot more. They start writing their own lyrics. They start humming their own melodies. They start playing with their music the way it was kind of intended to be played with. And then they start sharing these songs that they've made for people in this super high intent way, and that, like, really deepens human connection. And so it is, like, one of the best feelings when you send somebody a piece of art, a song, and and I say, hey, Alexa, I I really think you're gonna like this song. And you listen to it, and you're like, yeah, I like that song. And now when you've... I feel really good when I, you know, kinda feel like a taste maker. When I've made the song and I send it to you, that feeling is amplified by 10 or a 100 times. So it is only natural, I think, that once you develop these technologies and you put them in people's hands, that they love using them. You know? It's like, it shouldn't actually be all that surprising. Maybe it is, you know, like, a little bit crazy, but, like, this is what music was invented for. And so, like, in hindsight, we're actually not all that surprised by this.
00:19:03 · Alexa von Tobel
[00:19:03] S1: I wanna just, like, share something that I thought was pretty cool. So right now, you have artists like Xania Monet who became the first AI supported song act to debut on a Billboard radio chart and has over a 100,000,000 global streams since her debut in July. I mean, it's not just that you're creating music that people are enjoying and having fun with. Like, it's winning awards. What are you observing right now? I mean, this is... We're breaking some boundaries here, Mikey, that are pretty interesting.
00:19:40 · Mikey Shulman
[00:19:40] S0: This is definitely a new era. It is an exciting one. It is a very dynamic one. Things change very quickly. I think this is an incredible story of Nikki, who is the the lady behind Xania Monet, who is an incredible poet, who has now found a new way to share her work with the world by turning her amazing poetry into songs that really touch people in a significant way, and you see that in in how popular her music has become. But in some sense, it's not all that new. And if you rewind, let's say, thirty years and digital production of music started to come out. And so before, you could only make music in a studio on a giant console, and it was really hard and cost a lot of money. And then a lot of money. Yeah. And now you can make music on your laptop. And everybody said, this isn't real music. And everybody said, like, what's going on here? And then you start to discover 13 year olds making amazing music in their bedrooms, and new genres of music like EDM get invented or created, whatever you wanna say. New stars get found who are... Would never have been found before because they were too young or they were in their parents' basements or whatever it was. Right? Like, they weren't in the mainstream. And I think this is very similar. New people have access to making music. New types of music will get made. New genres will get created. You will find music that you would never have otherwise found before, and that's actually amazing for the entire ecosystem. And then I think the thing that's important is that we keep an open mind here because if you rewind thirty years ago when EDM started to to be a thing or when electronic music and electronic production started to be a thing, at the time everybody said, okay. Okay. Fine. Maybe it's music. But who in their right mind is gonna go to a concert just to see someone click play on their laptop? Like, that sounds really stupid. And fast forward to today, the biggest concerts in the world are these giant electronic music festivals where you're more or less watching somebody click play on their laptop. And I I think we have to be, like, a little bit open minded and humble about, like, what can become here because it's, like, largely counterintuitive how all of these things play out. And just to realize that people thought it would cheapen music by being able to make it on your laptop.