Hi, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd. Yeah. Let's do what I like to call an RFT, a "real fun thing". That's an Anthony Fantano trademark. Don't impede upon it, okay? Yeah, let's do an RFT and have a discussion about the continued erosion of art, music, and the creative process through AI.

This has been a topic on the channel many a time up until this point. You would think that we could just stop discussing it now, that we're beating a dead horse or something. But here's the problem. It keeps coming up. It won't go away. If this whole AI thing was dead on arrival and essentially was just dying on the vine, there would really be no reason to draw attention to it or discuss it. However, its power and its influence keeps growing and spreading like a hideous disease. The people who are pushing it out there into the world are getting bolder and less ashamed about their association with this garbage.

Enter the AI music generating platform, Suno AI, which if you check their social media pages, there are quite a bit of videos and pieces of short form content that essentially show you how quick and easy it is to use Suno to generate some original tracks. This one over here featuring this dude who is hammering out a real nice beat, school lunchroom on the table style.

Pen tap freestyle ➡️ 808 bass hip hop flow 😮‍💨

🖊️: @LenniesSimo pic.twitter.com/3wZROPZR8j

— Suno (@SunoMusic) January 4, 2025

And apparently after taking that recording and feeding it into Suno AI, this is what it came out with. I'm positively absolutely sure there are at least 100 hobbyist home producers watching this video right now, ripping their hair out of their head who would have done a much better job remixing this dude's rhythm into something way cooler, more colorful, more interesting.

Nothing against this guy, though, I'm sure he's gotten a check, and he's done some cool short form content that I've seen shared around Instagram. What I found even more strange was that they were proud to post this other clip over here, which features an electronic original.

tfw you make your own favorite song with suno v4 🙌

download our android or ios app now to make any song from anywhere

🎵: popeskasounds/TT pic.twitter.com/nUbWSr6fbu

— Suno (@SunoMusic) January 3, 2025

Oh, man, that was AI? You're telling me the most generic freaking glitch pop track with the 8-bit NES lead melody was made by a robot? I mean, I'm sure it did after you trained it on some kid's SoundCloud.

So, yeah, Suno AI seems to be a little on the come up when it comes to these music generation garbage platforms. Usually when I see these websites and services being pitched across social media, they typically like to sell them on the fact that they can enhance your creativity and so on and so forth. But the co founder of this company, Mikey Shulman, had a very different reasoning behind why Suno AI is so great, which comes up in the podcast discussion clip right here.

Mikey: "If you want to impact the way a billion people experience music, you have to build something for a billion people. That is first and foremost, giving everybody the joys of creating music. This is a huge departure from how it is now. It's not really enjoyable to make music now. People enjoy-"

Host: "Why do you say that?"

Mikey: "It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of practice. You need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software. I think the majority of people don't enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music."

Wow. What a take, but I guess not actually surprising for a guy whose Twitter bio says he's a former mediocre musician. I mean, that must be because he actually put in the work to become a good musician. That's how he knows making music and playing music is so much not fun.

Okay, before I go in on this, I just want to say I love how even the podcast host opposite of this guy even sort of sees his idea as being stupid on some level. I mean, he looks like he takes care of himself and works out and, of course, asks, 'Isn't it like running? Running is hard work, and running is cool, and being able to run is great, and putting in the hard work to learn and do something great is cool.' But no, apparently, that's not Mikey's mindset. He's like, You know what? Making music fucking sucks. It's lame, and it's dumb, and it's boring.

"Most people drop out of that pursuit because it was hard. I think that the people that the people that you know that run, this is highly biased selection of the population that fell in love with it."

Who wants to learn to make music and get good at art and stuff when you can just have AI get good at art for you? I'm sorry, but Mikey, Michael, Mikeman – maybe I'm speaking out of turn here because I am not a professional musician myself. But in my experience, many of the professional musicians who I know, the process of making the music they release to the world for their fans to hear is actually the most gratifying, interesting, and fun part of the whole process.

In fact, they actually wish they didn't have to do all this social media and promotional bullshit so that they would have more time to do the music making stuff. I mean, a lot of them would actually be making more music if they had the time and the resources and a bunch of other stuff. And, you know, if they weren't also having to worry about Spotify squeezing them dry monetarily.

Okay, personally, here's an even better hot take for you, Mike: Maybe not everyone should make music. Yeah, I, as a music reviewer, do personally think not everyone should make music. I don't mean to sound pretentious or like a gatekeeper or a jerk. And look, I'm also not trying to say here that you shouldn't make music if you suck and you're not good enough. No, honestly, even if you do suck and you're not that good, if you genuinely want to put in the to make and play and write music or whatever, then go for it, then do it. If you enjoy doing it, that is validation enough for you to do it.

However, if you're the type of person who sits there and fantasizes about like, 'Oh, man, wouldn't it be cool to be a musician, and wouldn't it be cool to be a singer and be on a stage and rock out?' But then in your mind, when you think of all the things and all the work that you're going to have to put in to do that and get to that place, you start to think, 'Actually, maybe I won't.' If that is your thought process, you have your answer right there. Don't fucking make music. Leave music making for the people that think of that work and think of that process and are like, 'I'm going to do that.' Those are the people who end up making your favorite albums, not the guy who's like, 'Oh, man, making music is so fucking lame.'

This take is just mind-blowing to me. I get it, musicians are in a tough place right now in terms of time and resources and a lot of other things. But simultaneously, between all of the technology we have at our fingertips, it has never been easier to generate and upload a track to the Internet. You can do it within a matter of hours at the very least. The idea that we need technology, we need some platform to step in and make music creating even easier for people who... Like, the demographic as Michael told you, is literally people who hate making music.

Yeah, honestly, the last people I want to hear music from are people who hate fucking making it. It's already hard enough to make great music when you actually want to do so, when that's actually your intention and you're passionate about it and you have fun making the music that you're making. What hope do all of these poor suckers have who actually don't even enjoy the process of making music? What are the chances they're actually going to make anything good? Zero. Less than fucking zero.

So honestly, I feel like Mike should just step back. Suno AI should just, shutter the doors of the company and maybe go back to the drawing board and try to make something that just has better intentions, better ethos behind it. It's okay to not be great at everything. It's okay to have fleeting thoughts where you muse about doing this or doing that or doing this other thing. It's okay to try stuff and fail at it and move on and realize that a certain something isn't for you.

Personally, one of my favorite artistic mediums is painting. I love going to museums. I love looking at art. I love just observing paintings and just beautiful works of art, be they Renaissance or abstract and everything in between. While I think painting and painters are really cool, and while it would be really awesome to have some work I created go up in the MOMA or something like that.

Simultaneously, when I think about everything I would need to do to get to that point, I'm not that interested in painting. I don't even really get that much personally out of the process of painting in and of itself. So as a result of that, I just don't. I don't do it. I leave painting to the people who enjoy painting, and then I turn around and go do the things I actually enjoy doing.

And again, that's okay. There's no failure in that. There's no shame in that. We can all do that. We don't need to then search for an AI platform to do that thing we wish we could do well for us and then call it our own. Because honestly, that's not really creativity. That's just bullshit. That's just being lazy.

Frankly, a warning, I am going to get me in here. There's already enough lazy ass music out there to begin with made by people who actually want to make it. People who, even if I don't really like their stuff – I have to respect the fact that they put in the work to make that thing happen regardless.

What I am never, ever, ever, ever, ever going to have respect for is some motherfucker being like, ' Ugh, making music is just boring as fuck. I'm just going to have AI do it for me and just call it my track. Boom, that's it. Call it a day.' Because really the word lazy doesn't even adequately describe how dumb that is.

So, yeah, again, let's leave making music for the people who actually want to do it and get joy out of the process of doing so. Maybe I'm setting my expectations too high making that the barrier to entry, but can we make it at least that? This is definitely one of the worst things I've seen and heard this week, and I can only imagine how much further this rabbit hole goes as we are on this race to the bottom when it comes to music and streaming and AI and all that shit.

Let me know what you guys think of this in the comments. I'm sure you will.

Anthony Fantano. Forever.