Wow, lot's interesting feedback on this, obviously, controversial topic. Great overview of the legal aspects by David Snyder. I was recently introduced to Suno by a long time writing friend of mine. Definitely knew it was coming, but had no idea what the beast looked like, until I took a close look at it. We had discussed it as a writing tool, a way to demo songs from our catalogues that we never had in the past. In Suno you can upload a basic demo, piano-vocal, guitar-vocal, the lyric and then in the Remix/Edit mode, select "Cover". You add a prompt, providing some guidance on style, instrumentation, etc, and within a few minutes you have a surprisingly solid demo, true to your lyric and melody.

But as the posters have noted, it goes way beyond that. Dropping a professionally written lyric into Suno, using good prompts, will spit out a pretty decent song. The system is built on millions of songs being analyzed, and following long established successful patterns of melody, structure, harmonies, etc.. As some have argued, it's not that different than what pro writers do, creating songs out of their past musical influences, what they have cultivated over the years. That's what the WBM was about, that Suno had used millions of copyrights without permission to create songs. Suno convinced the courts, it was not stealing exact lyrics & melodies, only analyzing patterns. It looks like the best WBM and others music companies will be able to do, is get a fee to allow access to catalogues for "model" building.

Getting back to my imaginary Suno song, produced from just a lyric. This, IMO, is where it can get slippery. Everyone is so desperate to get their music used commercially, how many people will run with that AI generated song and claim total authorship, lyric & music. As the article suggests, some writers, stuck for a good chorus, because what they have isn't working, will dump some of their lyric into Suno and may end up using a good portion of the chorus that was generated. Kind of like having a writing partner in the room, but it's a machine. As David Snyder pointed out, if the music or lyric was generated by AI, the copyright office will not issue a copyright (now), but if the song get's cut, a mechanical license will be granted and now that record has copyright protection.

The cat is out of the bag, AI music generation will only continue to improve, especially the fidelity of what they are generating in the country genre. Hopefully, it will be a while before a machine can generate a top notch lyric, but that also is probably coming. Publishers, artists, AR people have probably already been getting some very "cutable" product.

Outside of country/pop, the rest of what I heard on Suno was nothing short of amazing. I imagine the majority of what I have listened to is AI generated, maybe some original lyrics, hopefully some songs based on original lyrics and melody. Makes you think, outside of the inner circle who write with artists and get cuts, artists who write their own material, all the other songwriters, if they are looking to make a living, better learn a trade. Of course it's kind of like that now. If you aren't teaching other people how to write songs or you aren't writing with artists, there's not a lot of money to be made.

As a final thought. Maybe down the road the music industry companies buy the best AI music generating companies and generate the vast majority of commercial music, with actual human artists and maybe a few writers or would they be better described as "prompters". The rest of the masses can have access to a less "robust" AI platform, for those people who want to pick a genre, ask the AI to write a song about a cat, who falls in love with a dog, only to find out the dog is seeing other cats. It will spit out a cute little ditty, but nothing that threatens the real music industry. Oh I just though of a title without AI, "You Dog".