ZD 25.19: Nobody Listens to Suno
Suno is an amazing way to create and consume tracks. Pairs well with Eurovision.
Suno is an AI music generation tool that will change your life. Learn how to use it to create the tracks you want and learn how to use it as an infinite radio station. Start working on your own Eurovision act today. Don’t miss our banging musical coda.
The Distilled Spirit
Project and Product
📅 Ready for Calendar Zero? ()
What if the ideal calendar had zero recurring meetings?
✔ 10 Design Heuristics ()
Ten ideas to keep in mind when designing software and other systems from scratch.
📊 The Traditional Levels of Data Modeling ()
The three layers of data modeling to plan your application.
👓 The Future Will Be Subtitled (Computerworld)
Subtitles are a killer app for smart glasses.
🔫 Video Game Weapon Design ()
A few incredibly designed weapons from video games for inspiration.
Business & Finance
🤖 Can Huawei Take on NvIdia’s Cuda? ()
Huawei has not quite matched Nvidia but they are getting closer.
🚢 Trade Policy Dashboard (Agglomerations)
One way to measure the effects of the trade policy.
📦 Charting the World Economy ()
Adam Tooze kicks off a new series exploring the drivers of the world economy.
💵 Burrito Now, Pay Later ()
Making the case for buy now, pay later securitization.
🗣 Eric Topol and Tyler Cowen Converse ()
Two great minds in different fields dissect the future.
The Wide World of AI
🎨 Enjoying Digital Mass Production ()
The speed of creation is enabling digital mass production. Who does not want more pictures of their favorite pop stars?
💔 The First Industry ChatGPT Disrupted (Quanta Magazine)
Before coming for everyone’s jobs, transformer-based tools blew up the natural language processing field overnight.
👻 The First AI Victim Statements ()
An AI-generated simulation gave a victim statement in Arizona, marking the first time a victim had attended his killer’s sentencing.
🔬 A Critical Look at MCP (Raz Blog)
A developer-level critique of the flaws with MCP. Middleware is middleware.
✅ Gemini Vibe Check (Every)
Google Gemini might not be the talk of the town bit it could be winning the AI race.
Best of the Net
🏙 The Brilliance of New Jack City ()
New Jack City was a ground-breaking movie on a number of levels.
⚽ Introducing Futi ()
John Muller has an amazing stats brain and I want to see what he creates at Futi.
🍽 30 Things I learned from European Cooking ()
Learn it from the old country, doing the basics well goes a long way towards making cooking better.
🪑 The White Outdoor Chair for Everywhere (Domus Magazine)
That white, plastic outdoor chair is called the Monobloc. It has a story.
👰 Getting Married in Minecraft (The Future Party)
Today’s sign apocalypse is upon us.
Using Suno Effectively
I have always wanted to make music. This was impossible to achieve — I have no musical talent whatsoever if I am being honest. I was never, ever going to play Tomorrowland no matter how much I wished I could be AfroJack. That does not work when you have no sense of rhyme nor rhythm.
Suno changed that narrative for me. In case you are not familiar with the app, it is a very slick AI-powered music generation service. I have used it on this publication — it is the tool that creates the musical codas that have featured in each of the recent issues. I would argue it is one of the most fun parts of my AI toolkit. Check out my profile for some examples of what you can do.
Initially, the app’s output was fairly limited — songs were short and repetitive. The music has become immeasurably better over the last year. The service now has enough range to let you create works that sound really freaking awesome in just about any imaginable style. The ecosystem around the platform has grown to the point there is a healthy community of creators making and sharing content. It is likely somebody listens to Suno.
How to Listen
People think of Suno as just an AI music generator, but I spend more time listening to tracks than I do creating. It is an infinite radio channel. They curate some of the best songs to land on your home page. The home page is also an infinite scroll of music types, that seems to follow what you create and listen to on the tool.
There is one amazing feature that I can only find in the desktop website — you can use a song to create a playlist. This is where the potential of the platform shines. Match any musical mood, and you’ll find a catalog of user-generated content ready to roll. I hope this comes to other platforms soon, it would really be amazing to have on your mobile device.
Authors often leave the instructions and the style hints for any piece of music visible in the app. You can learn a lot by paying attention to what others are doing in the app. Listen before you sing is always good advice.
How to Create
Just because you can create tracks with AI does not mean you can create good tracks with AI. The current version of Suno, especially with paid plans and the latest 4.5 model, is very, very good. Like many modern AI tools, it does a good job of divining your intent and coming up with a nicely packaged first pass. The Suno app makes it almost disturbingly easy — at least in a burn-through-your-credits-fast kind of way — to generate variations until you get what you want. But beyond spinning the random number generator, there are some tricks to getting good results from the tool.
I will preface this by saying I know very little about making music, but I do know a few things about pseudo-coding and prompt engineering that will let you manipulate Suno fairly effectively. Here is a set of hints on how to get the music you want for your credits. You are going to need a paid account — v4.5 is worth the investment and you will need the credits. Ten songs is not much of a creative session with this tool; you need iterations. If you want to create, you are going to have to make a small investment.
Use Custom Lyrics!
First and foremost — if this is not obvious — the magic is unlocked by providing your own lyrics rather than having the app generate them for you. That is the control plane — if you insert the right notes in the lyrics you can make the song do things like change tempo, instruments, do drops, call hooks, insert sound effects, and change voices on cue.
Don’t forget there is an option for no lyrics — you can create an instrumental track just as easily. Need video game background music for your next presentation? Suno has you covered.
Giving Instructions
To instruct Suno, you use [tags instructions]. Tags have a number of functions — they can declare parts of your song like the [Intro] or [Chorus]. You can add instructions and audio effect hints in styles too such as [No Music], [Spoken Word], [Female Vocals], or [Phone Recording Sound Effects] for example.
To control music you use similar structures. Here are a few examples to get you going:
[Verse 1 – Slow piano melody, lo-fi drum loop]
[Beat: Melancholy keys, vinyl crackle, soft 808s] will create that sort of effect behind your rap verse.
[Hook – Beat switch: hard 808s, hi-hats kick in] will fire the hook for your rap anthem.
What works and what doesn’t isn’t always clear — you’ll need to experiment. In general, I have found using shorter and sweeter [tag instructions] and stacking them rather than big, complicated instructions works. Order by bigger instructions first and lead with song part.
Keep in mind this is AI. Syntax is not tight — it infers a lot of meaning behind your suggestions. Don’t feel like the instructions are code. Be experimental. Steal from other creators — the instructions are often left in the lyrics posted with songs. Experiment and see what works. Spin the RNG for fun. You will learn a lot and have a blast doing it.
Styling Songs
Suno’s other major control plane is the song styles. In 4.5 this is now pretty significant — you can share 1000 characters of instructions with the engine. Learn more about v4.5 here if you're curious about what's changed. This can be used to form the song in various ways. A simple version would be something like hard rock, metal, hypnotic, but with that much space you can be much more creative. You can get to very, very interesting mashups using this box. Anything goes.
One thing I love doing is iterating over the same lyrics with different styles until something starts to stick. You can also leave the style blank — Suno will guess styles from the lyrics submitted. This can work very well to create the right track, especially if you are not an expert in laying down your own beats.
Other AI Can Help
I have no musical background. I can’t write lyrics. I don’t know musical styles. But that is OK because ChatGPT is my Suno Sherpa. This is not to say Gemini or maybe even stuffy old Claude could not be your Sherpa, but ChatGPT is more comfortable so that is what I am using to bridge my gap and create music that isn’t flat-out bad.
I use the AI tool to:
Create lyrics from other content — such as the musical codas for this and other posts. The prompt is Create lyrics for a STYLE song from this content. Format the lyrics for Suno with sections identified and style instructions followed by the content. Elaborating a bit on style and direction can help a ton. Don’t forget ChatGPT and Suno are multilingual if you need something extra.
Don’t forget vision — asking a similar question but using an image or images as a source can be very powerful.
I don’t know how to describe how music sounds much beyond “make it sound like XYZ song.” Unfortunately Suno shuts this down. With a little coaching you can get your AI tool to spit out a description of a song’s style. Sometimes you need to really encourage it to go back and remove the artist. You can do more here — asking AI about how to describe the score for a movie or craft something from a particular era works.
Suno has a new feature where you can upload a short video that will loop while the song plays in the app. Sora or Veo2 are good options to deliver this brief film. Cover art is another underrated use — in a sea of options, curated cover art will make your song stand out.
Your chatbot of choice can really complement the music app if you choose to use it.
Other Places to Get Help
Beyond using AI to craft your lyrics, there are some good resources on the net.
Suno started on Discord. Even though you no longer make your songs there, the community is very active and a good place to ask questions or share your hottest creations.
Suno Wiki feels a bit dated and the headphone deals look a bit sketchy, but it is the most extant discussion of how to use the tool I have found if you just want to read through one source. All of the concepts certainly apply even if the current version has more options and is more forgiving.
The Music World Is Yours
Suno gives you the music world in a sense. It is a free, unlimited radio app. It has a very entertaining creation mode that can be tuned for very usable results. It lets you make custom music for just about any presentation or document or occasion. You can feel like Dr. Dre on any given day.
Musical Coda
The Look
Tariffs go up, tariffs go down. From Flowingdata.
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