Suno

Suno is a service that turns a few lines of text into a complete song. It started in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2022. You write lyrics and describe a mood, and it produces both the instrumental and the vocals together.

Suno isn't a middleman reselling someone else's model — it trains its own music-generation models. That's why the controversy around the company is about how it was made: specifically, whether it used existing music for training without permission.

That fight isn't over yet. Suno reached a licensing agreement with one major record label to legally use its music, but lawsuits from other labels and artists are still pending. The answer to "is AI-generated music legal" hinges on how those cases turn out.

Meanwhile, the business itself is doing well regardless of the legal disputes. It was the top music app on Apple's App Store throughout the summer of 2026, and Studio 2.0 added support for MIDI, the standard format musicians use, shifting the product from a toy toward a real production tool. In August, Alibaba released its own full-song generation model, kicking off real competition in this market.

"Suno reached a settlement with a record label" — this doesn't mean all litigation is resolved. Always check which specific company the settlement was with.