"It's not really enjoyable to make music now."

I came across this quote from Mikey Shulman, head of Suno, talking about why they built their AI music platform:​
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​“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 time they spend making music.”

I’m not sure if this was intentional rage-bait, but it definitely got me.

On some level I get what he’s saying from a business perspective. He wants to make a product that is inherently “easy” for people to use.

But the idea that making music should be frictionless and instantly enjoyable completely misunderstands why any of us pick up an instrument in the first place.

When I was 12, I borrowed a guitar from a mate because I wanted to be in a rock band.
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I was obsessed with Elvis, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix. Piano lessons hadn’t stuck, but guitar became my obsession.
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Every day after school I’d come home, plug in my white strat and play along to CDs until dinner. Then after dinner. It was everything to me.

A composer named Jyri responded to the Suno quote on Instagram yesterday. He said he got into music because “it’s a way for me to know myself and know my place in the world.”

Yep. That’s what guitar was doing for me.

The idea that we can boil it down to “enjoyable or not enjoyable” is such a profound oversimplification.

Do I sit down in the studio now and think “this is enjoyable” every time? No. Sometimes it’s a struggle. Sometimes I’m trying to solve a problem, find the missing piece, get the right take.

Sometimes songwriting is frustrating, sitting there with no ideas, or writing something and thinking “I hate this.”

But that’s not the point. If I just wanted enjoyment, I’d watch Seinfeld or go to a nice cafe. The struggle is part of why we do it.

Shulman also talks about “giving everybody the joys of creating music” through Suno. But the “joys” of making music come as a result of the process, the practice, the struggle, the trying - all of it.
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Typing a prompt and pressing generate in no way gives you that. It’s something else entirely. Maybe a game, or an experiment.
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But it’s not the same as working on something for a year and finishing it. That’s a completely different feeling.

I keep thinking about this: when I was a kid discovering guitar, I’d look at the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis, and couldn’t imagine how they even existed. How their music affected me so deeply.
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I heard Elvis’s voice in a live clip the other week and felt exactly what I felt as a child. This quality that seems otherworldly, almost impossible.

As a kid picking up guitar, something in me thought “maybe I could get somewhere close to that.” The goal was so far in the distance, so lofty. Almost because it seemed impossible, that was the appeal.
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If I could’ve just entered a prompt and generated it, it wouldn’t have given me any satisfaction at all.

So where does this leave me?

I’m not going to pretend I have it figured out. I’m not anti-AI as a blanket statement. I know producers and artists who use it as part of their process. It’s here.

My hope is: if AI is going to be intertwined in music making, maybe there’s a way that it enables humans who are truly passionate about making music to do more of it together. To be more present with each other as humans.

We’ve had sample libraries and Splice for years - tools that make it easier to work quickly. People still use session musicians. People still make music together. Maybe AI becomes another tool in that ecosystem.

Or maybe, in reaction against AI, it drives more people to make entirely human music with each other.

I’d love to hear where you’re at with all this. What do you think about the idea that making music needs to be “enjoyable” or it’s not worth doing?

Hit reply and let me know. I’m off to practice guitar in my room.

Until next week,
Pete