I tried Suno AI to create free music from text… and it’s amazing: the ChatGPT of music

Creating free music from a text prompt, with acceptable quality and including synthetic voices: this is the new level unlocked by Suno V3, the latest of the mass-use generative AIs that has arrived to join ChatGPT, Gemini, Dreamstudio, Dall-e 3, etc. In this article I will explain my experience with this AI, so you can easily use Suno and take full advantage of it.

What is Suno

Suno is a generative AI tool that allows you to create music, both instrumental and with “human” voice, easily and in a few seconds. Suno was created by a team of Cambridge-based musicians and artificial intelligence experts, led by CEO Mikey Shulman.

Although Suno had already been available for months, it was after the release of its version 3 last March 21, when this AI took off worldwide, leaving thousands of users perplexed.

I was among them.

Suno has many of the features that have allowed other AIs to become mainstream. So much so that, today, we could say that it is something like the ChatGPT of music. An easy-to-use tool with a free plan that is more than enough to generate enough songs to achieve virality in a short time.

Let’s see this “basic plan”.

Suno’s free plan

With this free plan, accessible by simply registering, Suno allows:

• Gives you 50 free credits per day: this will allow you to create up to ten two-minute songs per day (actually five pairs of songs per prompt).
• “Expand” the songs created to make them longer, or remix them
• Generate instrumental songs or songs with synthetic vocals, created by the AI itself
• Choose music style, arrangements, moods, song rhythm, etc.
• Give Suno the lyrics to include in the song or give her the context and let her create the lyrics, in Spanish, English, French or Chinese.
• Music can be downloaded or shared via link

However, you should keep in mind that these songs are created for free:

• can be shared, published, etc., but with attribution to Suno (“music created with Suno”).
• cannot be used for what Suno calls “commercial use”, so you can’t upload your creations to YouTube, Spotify etc. As it explains on its website, “Commercial use includes any use that generates revenue. This includes monetization on sites like YouTube and uploading songs to music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. It also includes licensing your songs for use in a commercial, movie, TV show or podcast.”

We will discuss the other paid options for using Suno at the end of the post. Now, let’s get down to work 😉

How to start using Suno

When you enter Suno you will find something like this:

In this initial screen you will be able to see a sample of all the songs that Suno users have been creating and making public. As you can see, you can explore the “trends” tab to see which ones are being listened to the most and even “like” the ones you prefer.

To start creating music, you must click on the “create” button in the upper left corner of your screen.

From here you have two options:

1. Create a song simply from a description, just as you would do to create an image in Dall-e 3. Include the prompt, check if you want the song to be “instrumental” (without voice) or not (in that case a lyric sung by a synthetic voice would be generated) and that’s it. Something like this:

2. Create a song including your own lyrics. To do this, you will have to activate the “custom mode” and complete, separately, the lyrics of the song, its style… and of course, the title it will have 😉 Here your imagination is the boss, but something like this:

Tips for creating songs with Suno

• Suno seeks the creation of original content, and for that reason, and to try to avoid getting into legal trouble, it will not follow your instructions if you ask to create a song “in the style of” some recognized group or author. Instead, you will have to give him details of what that music is like. That is, instead of asking for a song “in Green Day style“, you will have to ask for a song “in the style of 90’s American punk rock”.
• Provide all the details you see necessary about the music: styles (pop, rock, heavy, salsa, flamenco, etc) with all the nuances you want. Add instruments to be used, rhythm of the song, arrangements, etc. As with any AI generator, the more details, the better the result will be adapted to what you were looking for.
• In my experience, the combination of lyrics and music is better, more precise, if you do not provide the lyrics and let Suno create them. This is logical, thinking that if you give a lyric, you will have to think about it very well beforehand so that it adapts to the rhythm and beat of the song, so that there are no hanging or unbalanced verses. In any case, I assure you that Suno will do its best to make them fit 😉
• As you will see in some of the songs we have created, he is not very good at mixing languages. Rather, create them entirely in Spanish, English, etc.
• Be patient, Suno usually generates songs in less than a minute.
• In the event that the platform is saturated with users, suno limits the creation of songs to paying users.
• You can easily complete it using the “continue from this clip” option. Suno will generate two alternative endings that you can paste to your original creation.

Pricing plans in Suno

As we said, Suno also has a couple of payment plans. As you will see, using either of them allows you to create a huge number of songs (500 per month in the pro plan, 2,000 per month in the premier) plus more speed in the generation. In any case, the great advantage of these plans is that, even paying only one month, all the music you create during that time stays for you, forever, even if you unsubscribe from the service, with a license for commercial use. Something very appetizing.

Some examples of songs created with Suno

Evidently, we could not resist to create songs on M4C with Suno 😉 Here is a sample of them, with the prompt used, all in free mode:

• 90s punk rock: punnk rock from the nineties, powerful guitars, powerful vocals, positive
• “Celine Dion” style song: ballad pop, nineties, dramatic, powerful voice, female voice, great vocal range, moving, string arrangements, key change
• Cumbia: (this one is in spanish) cumbia, 110 bpm, choir, maraca, happy, uptempo, electronic, latin (letra propia)
• Dark metal: powerful dark progressive metal with some guttural screams (own lyrics)
• Country music: country music from the united states, happy, animated, powerful song

Imagen created with GPT Plus, music created with Suno 😉