Photo Credit: Suno

Longtime Suno subscribers are abandoning ship, believing that its new V6 model, developed in partnership with major labels, lacks the quality of its predecessors.

Suno unveiled its new V6 model earlier this month, which promises a new suite of music generation models developed in partnership with major labels following its licensing deals with Warner Music Group, BMG, and Believe. According to Suno, the V6 models are “faster, more expressive, and higher quality,” featuring a more sophisticated comprehension of musical language. But the response even from longtime subscribers has been mostly negative.

Most of the problem appears to be due to the new models’ audio quality. Users on Suno’s Reddit page described the output with V6 as “muffled, dull, and strangely lifeless.”

Another user described the vocals as sounding “buried, the high end feels almost completely gone, and the whole mix has that ‘blanket over the speakers’ feeling.” Someone else described V6’s output as sounding generic and bland, while yet another user said it sounded “overproduced, heavily compressed,” leading to tracks that “lack even a semblance of melody, grit, or soul.”

It’s ironic, considering that AI critics often describe AI-generated music as lifeless; however, even longtime users of the technology are now noting a difference due to the shift to only “ethically sourced” training material.

“I haven’t been able to generate a single track I like,” complained one user. “It completely lacks soul and basic understanding of how to compose a track; everything feels so random.”

“I’ve published two albums made with V5.5—people tell me the songs, vocals, and instrumentation are virtually indistinguishable from ‘real’ music,” wrote another user. “I spent the two days of free usage trying all the same styles and prompts in V6 and found it produced muffled, generic, soulless garbage by comparison.”

Some of these disgruntled users are asking Suno to bring back older models, which have been permanently retired due to increasing pressure from major record labels. While the company settled with WMG and signed deals with it and other labels, Suno still faces serious legal disputes with the likes of Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment.

The full spectrum of V6’s training data hasn’t been publicly disclosed, but it’s certainly much smaller and far less diverse than the dataset used to train Suno’s previous models. Suno’s transition into using only licensed training data is a welcome change for the music industry, which has expressed concern over the company’s training practices—as well as those of its rivals. However, if the negative response to V6 continues, Suno may find it increasingly difficult to drive engagement.