Suno Is Better at Music Than Us. But Does That Matter?

Three songs came in on the same day. And each one made me feel something completely different.

The first one was a demo from my co-write group. One of my co-writers ran our work tape through Suno and it sounded amazing. It nailed the vocals, the melody, the arrangement. My first reaction was not excitement. It was this. I wish I hadn't heard that.

The second was a press release from an artist I had been keeping an eye on. I went to Spotify, looked at the credits like I often do, and it said generated by AI. I just sat with that for a minute.

The third was a voice memo from one of my team members at church. A live mix from a recent service. Real band. Real musicians. Real vocalists. And it sounded really great.

Three songs. Three completely different feelings. And I think they are all trying to tell us something.

Is Suno better?

In some ways yes. It is faster. It never has an off day. It does not get sick. It can generate an album's worth of music in the time it takes me to finish my tea. The CEO of Suno has basically said that most people do not find making music fun or worth the effort and his tool is meant to fix that.

But here is where I push back. In my experience the process is never the problem. Sure it is frustrating. Sure there are moments in the studio where I hate a song and wish I had never started it. But there is always a breakthrough. And I think that breakthrough can be felt in the finished song.

If there is no cost to making it, what is it worth?

The demo becomes the target

There is a real thing in music production called demo-itis. Whatever that first recording sounds like, whether it is a rough iPhone voice memo or a full Suno production, it tends to set the bar for everything that follows.

When that first demo is AI generated and radio ready, the bar is set at a place that is nearly impossible to match with real instruments and real people in a real room. I had an artist in my studio recently who wanted to track vocals over Suno stems and the result just did not fit. The human voice in an AI world sounded out of place. Not because the vocals were not good. Because everything around them was so hyped and so perfect that real humanity felt like the outlier.

He said something that stuck with me. Suno can create really professional sounding demos but it can get our expectations all out of whack. And then he said this. The process and the people are just as if not more important than the finished project.

I think he nailed it.

When did speed become the metric?

There is a scene in I Can Only Imagine where an interviewer asks Bart Millard how long it took him to write the song. He said ten minutes. And she said you have been writing that song your entire life.

That is the point.

AI can take an idea and produce it in seconds. But the tendency is going to be that we homogenize and commoditize music to the point where it loses all its meaning. Because music connects with people because it is lived experience. It is shared humanity. And you cannot generate that.

Your story is the thing AI will never have.

What we are protecting

Remember that third song. Real band. Real vocalists. Real people in a room together worshiping God in all of their humanness and all of their brokenness.

It was not perfect. But it was real. And to me that is the destination.

No AI can replicate that because it is not real. And here is something I genuinely believe. As AI generated content continues to flood the market it makes the real human thing more valuable. When something becomes rare it becomes valuable. The struggle, the story, the sharing from a real place of humanity. That is going to become more appealing not less as this technology grows.

The more AI generated music fills the space the more unique and important your voice becomes.

This is not anti AI. It is pro calling.

I want to be clear. I do not have a problem with using Suno for demos especially if you are a songwriter who does not have production skills. It is a great tool for communicating vision and arrangement ideas. Use it.

But the tool is not the destination. It is a means to get to where you are called to go.

God did not call us to a finished perfect product. He called us to a life of making music for our Creator. And that is not something any algorithm can touch.

Three songs in one day. One made me wish I had not heard it. One made me ask what are we even doing this for. And one reminded me what it is all about.

The authentic sharing of life through music. That is what we are protecting.

Watch the full episode: https://youtu.be/eCrZDfMwSQI?si=fvUJBpaInE0bRjQx

Come talk about it in the Called to Music community on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/calledtomusic