I’m of the generation that grew up before many innovations that are today commonplace – like microwave ovens, mobile phones and bendable paper-thin LCD touch screens. To give you an idea, an example I often use, is that between 1986 and 1991, whilst I worked on my first draft of what would become “Blachart” (my first sci-fi novel), mobile phones were still in the realm of sci-fi! We only started to get those here in South Africa in 1993 – and I must say, seeing all the folks walking around talking on their phones suddenly made most of the “futuristic” sci-fi I’d watched and read up to that point – including my own – seem suddenly quite backward and lacking!
Not that I wasn’t keenly interested in tech and advancements in tech – I was, but at that time, it seemed they were slow in coming. The first time I saw a digital watch for example, was when my mom gave me one as a 8th birthday gift back in 1981. It was nothing fancy, just a plain stainless steel watch that displayed the time, date and had a second counter (for some unfathomable reason), and a screen light that was so dim it didn’t even fulfil its intended purpose – but to me it represented the future!
Looking back, advancements in tech have come at an increasingly rapid, furious pace since then – to the point where today we already take things like smart phones, flat touch screens, holograms, drones etc. for granted! Even robots are already available, albeit still the purview of the wealthy, but I’m reasonably sure domestic robots are still on the near horizon. Which brings me to the subject of this article – AI. Artificial Intelligence – or in this specific case, algorithmic AI.
Having been a sci-fi author for most of my life, having over the last 30 years or so written stories featuring things like robots and homicidal computers (“Demonspawn“) I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d ever do a real-life review of a generative AI service, but it’s now 2024, AI is making inroads into territory heretofore solely occupied by people who demanded money for their services – and so here we are.
Today I’ll be reviewing not just one, but TWO similar generative AI platforms or service providers – Udio and Suno, in no particular order, based on my own personal experience of using them.
Before I look at each of these two service providers individually, perhaps I better explain exactly what it is they do and what they’re used for. Udio and Suno are generative AI music generators. From a practical aspect, all the user has to do is enter a prompt – that is, tell the program what they want it to generate, including such details as genre, style, male or female vocals etc. and they can also insert their own lyrics, and the program will present two different outcomes the user can choose between – or use both if they wish. Most impressive of all, both these two platforms provide this service for FREE. Yes, both services offer paid memberships with higher benefits, but the free levels offered on both are sufficiently usable as they are. This to me is by far the most important part! That said, the differences between them is more in the interface, method and process of generating itself.
Before I launch into it though, I have to emphasize that both these platforms are very evenly matched. Each has their own advantages and disadvantages, and they sort of balance out – and while I may be getting lost in weighing these up, I might tend to forget how truly mind- blowing it is that a piece of software is responsible for turning my words into beautiful music that probably wouldn’t be out of place playing on a radio station!
I happened to encounter a couple of videos describing Udio and Suno on YouTube a while back, and decided to take a look. After all, having more control over the audio I use in my marketing and promo material than just using free audio files has been an appealing concept ever since I had to start making book trailers and the like. Granted, these tools aren’t perfect, and their generated lyrics aren’t either – with the occasional oddball creations coming out, but if you give it the lyrics you want them to work to, it’s rather difficult for either of them to deviate from that. Garbage in, garbage out, as the saying goes – with the inverse being true: quality in = quality out.
That said, let’s start with Udio, for no other reason than because it’s the one I started using first.
Udio
I first encountered Udio where it was being discussed in a YouTube video about a month ago, and immediately began experimenting with it. Wow, was I surprised – and impressed!
Although the engine Udio is based on can generate its own lyrics, I opted to use the lyrics of my own poetry instead, and created a bunch of tracks I was very impressed with.
When it comes to ease of use, Udio’s interface is clear and simple and easy to work out. It generates tracks 33 seconds at a time, so it is more complicated and fiddly to use than Suno in that you need to enter each verse of a song separately to generate the next 33 seconds of track each time – whereas with Suno, you can just drop the whole body of lyrics in at one go, hit ‘generate’ and it will do the rest. There are advantages to this though, because you can ‘steer’ the direction the sound of the song goes in, and you can also add sections at the beginning of the track, whereas in Suno you can’t do that as far as I can tell.
Here we come to the prickly issue of creative censorship – and boy, are there a few monstrous pricks all over it! Although this only happened in the case of one track I was trying to create, it was unbelievably frustrating to me, being told that I couldn’t do something because it contained naughty words or concepts that “violated” some or other bullshit fantasy “community standards”. This happened while I was trying to generate the third verse of “Waiter, There’s A Bigot In My Soup!“, which I intended to use as a back-track for an animated video based on the book I published some years ago – thoroughly derailing that project – at least, through Udio. I literally couldn’t finish the track there – at least without omitting the “naughty” word (“bigot”) – which I wasn’t going to do, because the lyrics are the lyrics, the way I wrote them!
Tell me, geniuses who run Udio, how are you supposed to create a piece warning about the dangers of fascism if you can’t actually use words like “bigot” in the lyrics? I’ve seen some silly, pointless shit in my time, but this really takes the biscuit. Asshats.
I took it over to Suno a while later, and used it to generate four different versions of the exact same song, complete, without any fannying about (or finger-wagging) over using words that some pretentious sanctimonious twat or other didn’t like. Yes, I know it’s free – but creative censorship is and always will be a load of FASCIST bullshit in itself! If I want to create something, don’t get in my way! Here endeth the rant about that… at least for now.
The unpleasant business of creative censorship aside, I have nothing bad to say about Udio. It’s a very good, useable tool for generating music and vocals of a high, believable standard and I had plenty of good results. Well done.
Suno
I got into Suno a few weeks after Udio, and was immediately blown away by the difference in both interface and results. Like Udio, Suno’s interface is clear and simple and easy to work out. The only real complaint I have about Suno‘s interface/display is that it creates a large empty space down the right hand side of the screen, making everything else on display seem a little smaller and crowded.
Suno generates complete tracks of varying length, usually up to 4 minutes at a time, and these tracks can also be extended if you wish it. Therefore it is simpler and easier to use than Udio in that you can just drop the whole body of lyrics in at one go, hit ‘generate’ and it will do the rest. It also strikes me as a bit more polished on the whole than Udio. The only disadvantage to Suno I can work out, is that you can’t add new sections to the start of a track, which you can do over at Udio.
Another huge plus is that Suno didn’t even once try to censor anything in my lyrics, which is a very big deal for me. It took me only two or three tries to get the right result I was looking for when I was making the backtrack for “Waiter, There’s A Bigot In My Soup!“. Kudos to Suno for not falling for that load of degenerate populist crap.
Suno‘s engine provides for virtually any sort of musical sound, style or genre you can think of, although its interpretation of them can sometimes wander a little from what you had in mind – but the same can also be said of Udio.
Conclusion
There are people out there who fly into a murderous rage the moment anyone mentions the taboo acronym “A.I.” – and who would probably crucify me (if they had their way) for making use of such tools, but oh well, they’ll just have to get in line (it’s a pretty long one, I think)! Being a poor indie author who has to do her own marketing and promotion, I have to make use of all the cheapest (preferably free) services I can find – and that means using free AI image generators – and yes, free AI music, video and sound effects generators, where applicable. I guess all the malcontents feeling disgruntled about that can just join the back of the queue of pissed off artists-for-profit and their cronies chanting “theft” through the gnashing of their teeth, but oh well. I guess I’ll have to just wring my hands and look suitably anguished for their benefit.
The simple fact of the matter is, critics of generative AI have a very poor understanding of the subject. It’s literally a mob of hysterical villagers giving outlet to their baseless fears by gathering with flaming torches and pitchforks and looking for soft targets. I may look like a soft target, but as they say, assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups.
…But I digress. Never mind all that.
As a writer, I can tell you how profound it is to hear a narrator read your work in an audiobook. Imagine then, hearing a poem you wrote suddenly and miraculously transformed into a masterpiece of sound! Music that perfectly matches the emotion of the piece – vocals that flawlessly interpret the words! Goose bumps! In short, it’s bloody amazing!
The two platforms are very much on a par on this point, and as far as I can tell, both are also prone to producing the occasional weird shit that makes no sense at all – but that’s not nearly as common as you might think. Plus, it’s a whole lot of fun to use either (or both) of them! On the whole, very, very well done to both Udio and Suno for making this a reality, and especially (so far) for keeping it free.
Comparison:
Rating: 01/10 worst, 10/10 best.
- User Friendliness: Udio – 10 / Suno – 10
- Simplicity: Udio – 9 / Suno – 9 (Both have minor issues that brought the score down from a 10)
- Free Usability: Udio – 10 / Suno – 10 (Both offer totally free use with daily credit limits that renew every 24 hours.)
- Quality Of Output: Udio – 9/ Suno – 10 (There is some noticeable difference between output quality, but this might be due to differences in how these platforms interpret inputted prompts).
- Creative Freedom Of Expression: Udio – 5 /Suno – 10 (Suno doesn’t censor lyrical content. Udio does.)
Takeaways:
Basically, if you don’t like faffing about with prompts and settings and just want to drop in a prompt, perhaps including lyrics, and click “go”, then Suno is likely the one best suited for your needs.
Suno‘s output impresses me as somewhat more polished than Udio’s.
Udio is a little more complicated and clunky than Suno in that it will only do up to 33 second stretches of a track at a time, but in return you do get to change the direction of the song as you construct it, so it’s not all downhill. Udio will also let you add sections at the beginning or in the middle of a track, so in that sense it has a little more functionality than Suno.
But there is considerably more faffing about in Udio than in Suno – and it’s quite possible that you might run out of free credits before you finish a really long track, or are more picky about the result you really want. No worries though, because both platforms refresh new daily credits overnight, so you can come back and carry on later.
“Suno” scores FIVE STARS on the Tinamometer 
Other than that, well done to all concerned.
