AI Music Generation: Do We Have a New Champion?

Automated music generation has been around as a concept for centuries—maybe you were there in the 1700s when Musikalisches Würfelspiel (composition from dice rolls) was all the rage. And while DALL*E, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney have brought GenAI to visual arts, we haven’t seen as much GenAI music composition since OpenAI teased Jukebox in 2020.

But things seem to be heating up: Riffusion secured $4M last year, and we’re starting to see public-facing “Midjourney except for music” in toolls like Suno. And now, freshly launched into public beta is a new generator, Udio.

How to Use These Things

Suno and Udio are similar—you enter a musical style or genre; you enter lyrics; and you hit a button to generate:

A few moments (or minutes) later, BOOM, you have yourself a pair of tracks:

Suno vs. the Newcomer

So, then: Suno’s been around for ages in GenAI timescale. Udio’s a few days old as of this posting. I wanted to compare the two. Same lyrics, same prompts. Let’s see how they fare!

Round 1: Rocking ‘80s Cartoon

I ask ChatGPT-4 to create lyrics for one of my faves and yours, Deep Rock Galactic.

It knows about the game, and comes up with this:

(Verse 1)

In the depths of Hoxxes, under alien skies,

Four dwarves rally with a glint in their eyes.

With pickaxes ready and spirits high,

They delve into caverns where danger lies.

(Chorus)

Rock and stone, to the bone!

In the dark, we're never alone.

For Karl, we mine, we fight, we strive,

Deep Rock Galactic, keepin' the legend alive.

I then took that and gave Suno “Rocking ‘80s Cartoon” as a genre. It generated these two tracks:

Not bad! That’s a computer making music, folks. Giving the same parameters to Udio, I get these—give ‘em a listen (it even comes up with song titles, which is a nice touch):

So, who’s better, Suno or Udio?

Verdict: Galactic Miners Anthem is peak Queen-inspired AI. I gotta give this round to Udio.

Round 2: Balatro

Next up, Suno and Udio will compose tracks about the hugely popular Poker roguelike deckbuilder, Balatro. Here’s ChatGPT-4’s initial attempt at creating a song about that:

Oh Balatro, a land untold,

Where the rivers run with stories bold.

Mountains kiss the painted sky,

Secrets whispered, old and high.

That’s not right! As of April, ChatGPT-4 has no clue what Balatro is, so it’s hallucinating.

However, with the handy-dandy tools we use to create the summaries for We ❤ Every Game, we can snag Balatro metadata—name, marketing copy, tags, user reviews, and the whole 9 yards—stuff that into ChatGPT, and then ask it for a song. It generates this:

(Verse 1)

In the heart of the night, where the stakes run high,

A neon glow under a pixel sky.

Balatro calls, with cards spread wide,

Where poker rules and rogues collide.

(Chorus)

Shuffle the deck, play your hand,

In this game, every card stands grand.

Jokers wild, feeling the thrill,

Balatro's world, bend to your will.

Sending that to Suno and instructing it to create tracks in the “Casino Heist Soundtrack” genre, we get this:

The vocals in track #1 are somewhat indistinct. On the other hand, strong Bossa Nova on track #2, which is pretty good. Here’s Udio:

Clearly, Udio’s notion of “Casino Heist” is much more modern. Both are reasonable takes!

Verdict: For the clearer vocals, I’d give +1 to Udio.

Round 3: Trevor Stricker

For the final round, I’ll shove the LinkedIn profile of my friend and yours, Trevor Stricker, into ChatGPT-4 and ask it for a song:

(Verse 1)

From the halls of MIT to the gaming sphere,

Trevor Stricker, with a vision clear.

Building teams, crafting games, a tech embrace,

Surfing waves of code, in a digital race.

(Chorus)

Game changer, dream architect,

In the world of pixels, he connects.

From Disco Pixel to Mightier's call,

He crafts the games that captivate us all.

Okay, so no LLM is going to win “Songwriter of the Year” this month, but if you’d asked me in 2004 whether a computer could read up on someone and write a song about them, I’d have said, “sure, right when we get cold fusion.”

Suno, with “a heavy metal track”:

And Udio:

Nooooooooooo! Okay, Udio’s been around, in beta for about 2 whole days, and its Twitter account has gained nearly a thousand followers since I started writing this blog post, so I think this is getting the Reddit Hug of Death. Totally understandable.

Verdict: Point to Suno!

In Conclusion

Both tools are similar in form and function. They’re interesting and unpredictable and fun—playing with them is akin to rolling dice. In 2 out of 3 rounds, I’d give a slight edge to Udio. But I’d give an extra point to Suno for being Boston-based. So, call it a tie.

That’s all I got to say today. I’d be curious to hear what folks think about both tools!