"Too good to live on a screen": Suno will sell vinyl of music its own algorithm generated

Suno, the firm that makes music with artificial intelligence, has unveiled its own vinyl pressing service. Suno Vinyl is meant to let users obtain a physical copy of what they generated on the platform.

This was reported by Mixmag.

What is on offer is a twelve-inch black disc made of PETG, which the company calls the more eco-friendly option. The sleeve, the labels and the artwork are designed by the user. The price is around $45 plus shipping per pressing.

"Not a novelty cut"

On the service's website the company stresses that each vinyl is "a genuine pressed record, not a novelty cut". The call to action there reads: "Ready to hear yourself on vinyl?"

"Press a personal keepsake. Press a gift for a loved one. Or press a banger, because it's too good to live on a screen," reads the Suno Vinyl website.

The "in-the-works service" was set up "as part of an effort to explore ways to give people physical versions of the music they create," a spokesperson for Suno told Music Business Worldwide.

Against the backdrop of a lost case

The company is opening this line at an awkward moment. A German court found that Suno had breached both German and US copyright law: it had used, stored and reproduced protected works without permission from the rights holders. Suno was ordered to pay damages to artists represented by the collecting society GEMA; the amount was not disclosed.

Suno rejected the ruling and said it is weighing "all available options", including an appeal. So a platform a court has just barred from training on other people's music without a licence is now offering customers a print of the result on the medium that has spent twenty years standing for the opposite — physical, authored, and taking up space on a shelf.

As reported earlier by ONE//FM, it was Munich Regional Court that found the Suno generator had trained on works from GEMA's catalogue without permission.