Suno says “accessibility” is the reason for its success — but I think accessibility is the problem with AI musicBandcamp recently made headlines with a simple and clear policy on AI: “Music and audio that is generated wholly or in substantial part by AI is not permitted on Bandcamp.”
This represents the first major music distributor to enforce such a ban, and it comes at a time when AI music companies are growing at breakneck speed. Last November, Suno, the AI music creation platform, signed a new licensing deal with Warner Music Group and was valued at $2.54 billion, with “accessibility ” being the driving force behind this massive number.
“Suno is the world’s #1 music creation app, making music accessible to everyone.” That quote is attributed to Amy Martin, a partner at Menlo Ventures, the venture capital firm that helped Suno raise $250 million on its immense valuation.
Suno’s leadership didn’t use the word “accessible” in their statement, but the gist was there:
“In just two years, we’ve seen millions of people make their ideas a reality through Suno, from first-time creators to top songwriters and producers integrating the tool into their daily workflows,” says Mikey Shulman, Co-Founder and CEO of Suno.
Also, in 2025, Shulman said: “It’s not really enjoyable to make music now […] It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software. I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music.”

Apparently, making the creative process as accessible as possible is how making music will be enjoyable again.
Not only is it ridiculous to think that artists don’t enjoy the time spent improving their craft, but accessibility is clearly just an excuse to tap into a larger customer base. The more people who can access something, the more people can pay for it.  How else could a company reach billions in value, and who wouldn’t want to pay for the immediate ability to make music?
To make that process available to everyone with the least effort possible is to dilute the hard work of artists who are pouring everything they have into their craft.
Spotify, the world’s most popular streaming service, provided a similar level of accessibility for releasing music. With the help of a distributor like DistroKid or CD Baby, anyone can upload their music to a streaming service. Arguably, this landscape is a positive for creators because everyone is equally searchable on Spotify. Any time someone discovers a brand new artist, they have the immediate ability to listen to their music. Those artists can also send direct links to their music, and all those streams will lead to royalties (if the song earned 1,000 streams in the previous 12 months).
The downside is that all artists, labels, private equity firms, or whoever owns the music gets the same royalties back from Spotify. They could have invested thousands of hours and millions of dollars into the song on top of the years of their life it took to learn their craft. Or they could have made the song in five minutes on Suno because making music is just that accessible now. Either way, it’s currently the same amount of money earned per stream.
Music data platform Chartmetric tracks roughly 11 million artists, and 80% of them have fewer than 1,000 Spotify monthly listeners. So, really, the result of this extreme accessibility is that millions of hobbyists are now able to share their music. This crowds the landscape for the artists who are giving it their all, and plagues them to earn practically nothing from the medium that most people use to listen to music in 2026.
This dynamic portends what will happen as Suno grows. The vast majority of creators on the platform will be hobbyists who just want to try their hand at making music for a mere moment.
But, Shulman said that “top songwriters and producers” are using Suno, right? That’s true of Timbaland, one of the most successful producers in history. Suno even made Timbaland a creative consultant for the company.
The thing is, according to Rolling Stone, Timbaland uses one function of Suno called “cover song.” As the name suggests, this function takes an existing song and transforms it into different versions. The existing songs Timbaland is using are from his extensive back catalogue, which he’s accrued over three decades of making music the hard way.
Per the interview, Timbaland describes these songs he’s covering as essentially complete. They have lyrics, melodies, beats, and production. Clearly, he is still honouring human creativity and then using Suno to generate new ideas. This is arguably the most benevolent use of the program (even though Timbaland did end up using a copyrighted song to train Suno without permission).
Unfortunately, barely any Suno users will have a Timbaland-level catalogue ready and waiting to transmute into different versions. They’ll have to start from scratch using prompts for an AI that’s trained on recorded music from hard-working artists for what will most likely be paid pitiful royalties.
…all in the name of accessibility.
What’s even more insulting about this idea of accessibility is that music-making is already so accessible! Smartphones and tablets can access free and fully-featured music-making apps and DAWs. These programs have everything a beginner needs: recording capabilities, virtual instruments, and effects. Madlib produced all the beats for, Bandana, his 2019 collaborative album with Freddie Gibbs, on an iPad, as an example.
With a few taps, brand new music-makers can lay down a beat and record some vocals. The first one won’t sound anywhere close to professional, but the 1,000th one will. All Suno does is give everyone the opportunity to skip from one to 1,000 and build music without their own tastes and techniques.
When Bandcamp launched Bandcamp Fridays during the pandemic, the people working there showed they care about the artists who are willing to take the journey from 1 to 1,000. Today, Bandcamp Fridays continue to pay out millions to artists, long after the pandemic has ended.
Clearly, people still want to use their hard-earned money to support artists putting in the work to make music, and rather than give every potential artist the chance to access that source of income, Bandcamp is drawing a line in the sand.
Bandcamp is offering a platform for dedicated musicians, producers and beatmakers to connect with audiences and sell the human-made music and merch that they care about. That’s what real accessibility looks like.
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