Subvolts take Suno's AI makes music creation the entertainment, like gaming. May 13, 2026 - Developers
- Learn about Suno's technical choices in modeling sound and prioritizing full songs over clips.
- Business
- Understand Suno's strategy on partnerships and its view of the music industry's evolution.
- Everyday users
- Discover how AI is making music creation accessible and entertaining for everyone.
This interview provides a detailed look at a company innovating in AI music generation and its unique approach to the industry.
Suno's Mikey Shulman: Everyone Can Make Music Now
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From Subvolts
Summary and analysis by Subvolts editorial, AI-assisted.
Suno CEO Mikey Shulman discusses how his company flips the music creation model, making creation the entertainment. He explains technical choices like modeling raw sound waves and using autoregression. Shulman also touches on partnerships, interactive live events, and the future of digital music.
Suno uses AI to let anyone create music easily. Instead of just listening, people can make their own songs, turning music into a fun, interactive experience similar to playing a game.
This episode offers insight into a company challenging traditional music industry models with AI. It's for creators, technologists, and anyone interested in AI's impact beyond text generation. Listeners learn about Suno's specific technical approaches and their strategic thinking on partnerships and user engagement, relevant to how other labs are exploring multimodal AI and creative applications.
- HostSequoia Capital
- GuestMikey ShulmanFounder and CEO, Suno
- Guest: Mikey Shulman, Founder and CEO of Suno
- Show: Training Data
- Length: 35 minutes
- User Engagement: 90% of daily users make something on Suno
- Technical Approach: Modeling raw sound waves, autoregression over diffusion
- Industry View: Partnering with Warner matters more than disrupting labels
Most music platforms assume you're a listener. On Suno, 90% of daily users make something. Founder and CEO Mikey Shulman explains why that flips the model: the act of creating IS the entertainment, with closer parallels to gaming and Claude Code than to Spotify. He breaks down the technical bets that got them here — modeling raw sound waves instead of encoding music theory, choosing autoregression over diffusion to prioritize full songs over crisp clips, and why music isn't a scale problem the way LLMs are. He also shares why partnering with Warner matters more than disrupting the record labels, what a truly interactive Coachella might look like, and why he thinks the digital music experience is finally due for its first real change in 25 years.
Hosted by Sonya Huang, Sequoia Capital
- autoregression
- Mikey Shulman
- A way AI predicts the next part of a sequence, like words in a sentence or notes in music, based on what came before.
- diffusion
- Mikey Shulman
- Another AI method often used for generating images or short audio clips by gradually refining noise into a coherent output.
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Questions people ask
- What is Suno's approach to music creation?
- Suno flips the model by making creation the entertainment, with 90% of daily users making something. They model raw sound waves and use autoregression for full songs.
- How does Suno view partnerships in the music industry?
- Suno believes partnering with entities like Warner is more important than disrupting existing record labels.
Page generated Oct 19, 2026. Summaries are Subvolts' own; the audio, artwork and notes belong to Sequoia Capital.