Disclosure
Shulman: Using copyrighted works in AI training data is industry standard
“Yeah, we know that there are some copyrighted works in our training data. That's not illegal. It's stock standard for the industry. It's what every AI company does.”
Insight
Shulman: Empty text box UI is wrong for most AI products
“They did every AI company a huge disservice because everybody thinks that just like empty text box is now the right interface, and it is for ChatGPT, and it is incorrect for basically everything else.”
Insight
Shulman: Scaling laws will not solve AI music generation
“For music, It's very different from text, and I think people will very sloppily look at the world of OpenAI and Anthropic and the hyperscalers and say audio is just a couple years behind, which it is, but that scale is gonna solve all these things. But unlike …”
Assertion Partly supported
Shulman: Quantum computing startups face fundamental physics challenges, not engineering ones
“The challenges are not they're still physics challenges. They're still like basic research challenges that have to happen here, and so it's not something where you can kind of just turn the crank and make companies out of it, and to my knowledge, all of the co…”
Opinion
Shulman: Music incumbents suing AI startups before negotiating is inefficient
“On paper, I would say it just seems silly to throw a bunch of venture dollars at lawyers instead of sitting down and talking about how you could Work together. You know, like, deciding to sue first and then ask questions later seems to me to be inefficient, bu…”
Prediction Open · timeframe Jan 2028
Shulman: Suno will survive even if it loses copyright lawsuit
“If this lawsuit goes to trial and we lose, it's obviously not good for us. The company, the company's not dead, but it's obviously not good for us. I don't think that's likely.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shulman: Most artists privately admit to using and loving Suno
“The vast, vast majority of artists that I speak to Behind closed doors admit that they use and love Suno.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Mikey Shulman: Human taste will outweigh technical skill in future art
“It's increasingly taste is the only thing that matters in, in, in art, and skill is going to matter a lot less because you're going to be able to make a lot of stuff And the people who are going to be recognized are people who are able to pick from the vast qu…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Shulman: AI companies will soon stop releasing standalone raw models
“At some point, I don't know if it's version four or version five, there will be a last model release that is released as a model, and everything else is just product releases.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Jan 2030
Shulman: VCs will not get timely returns on quantum computing investments
“I don't think you're gonna get your money back in a reasonable time.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Shulman: Users Choose Suno for Product Quality, Not Model Size
“At the end of the day people will use Suno because it's a better product, not because there's a bigger, better, bigger model under the hood.”
Insight
Shulman: Scaling AI research headcount yields sublinear returns
“The machine learning team at Suno will almost certainly not scale as quickly as the software team, or said differently, I think research is not something that you can solve with scale. You can just throw more bodies and you'll get, you know, comparatively more…”
Disclosure
Shulman: Suno actively works with plenty of music industry incumbents
“And by the way, there are plenty of incumbents in the industry who do work with us.”
Opinion
Shulman: Most people do not enjoy the time spent making music
“It's not really enjoyable to make music now. 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 …”
Insight
Shulman: Hit songs succeed via algorithms and promotion, not quality alone
“I think that they probably reverse the causality. Things break on TikTok, and then they become famous on Spotify, but that is a function of both algorithms and people pushing music, and not necessarily only a function of the quality of the music.”
Disclosure
Shulman: Suno refuses API requests from generative AI video companies
“The vast majority of Gen AI video companies have asked us for an API so that they can have, you know, Suno music behind their AI videos, and the answer's always no.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Shulman: The term 'prompt' will disappear within six to twelve months
“I hope that, you know, in, in six months from now, or 12 months from now, we're not using the word prompt. There are just far more intuitive ways to interact with the music, and we shouldn't be guiding you we should be listening to you if that makes sense.”
Insight
Shulman: Requiring complex prompts is an AI product failure, not user failure
“Well, if it took a really complicated prompt and 1600 iterations, that's a failure of my product, not a failure of the candidate.”
Insight
Shulman: VC promises of reserve capital are actually not founder-friendly
“So that's, you know, that, that's billed as very founder friendly and it's actually the opposite.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Shulman: Interactive music will drive consumer spending like video games
“I think if you accomplish all those things and if you make music interactive and you make music engaging people will pay for it like they pay for video games.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shulman: Suno's edge is audio representation, not model architecture
“Our competitive edge here has not been to innovate on the architecture, and has been to innovate on the, Audio representation.”
Insight
Shulman: Infinite AI supply lowers individual track value but increases music's overall worth
“I think it reduces the average value of any given piece of content, but I think it greatly increases the value of music to society or to any given person.”
Opinion
Shulman: Suno Is the Only Place Aligning AI to Human Taste
“If you are interested in a different AI problem, in the problem of how do I align Models, not to objective truth, but to human taste. I think there's nowhere else to do it.”
Disclosure
Shulman: Suno's GPU compute spend is several times its entire payroll
“It's the biggest thing by far. Yeah. It's a few times payroll.”
