Suno Made $300 Million While the Music Industry Wrote Open Letters About It

On February 25th, Suno CEO Mikey Shulman posted on LinkedIn that the AI music generator has reached $300 million in annual recurring revenue and 2 million paid subscribers. Over 100 million people have used the platform since it launched two years ago.

That same week, a coalition of artist representatives published an open letter titled "Say No to Suno." They called the company a "brazen smash and grab" platform and accused it of running "unauthorized AI platform machinery trained on human artists' work."

Both things are true. And that's the whole problem.

The Numbers Are Hard to Dismiss

When Suno closed a $250 million Series C in November, The Wall Street Journal reported it was generating $200 million in annual revenue. That was three months ago. Now it's $300 million — a 50% jump in a quarter. The platform is priced at $10/month for Pro and $30/month for Premier, which means it has somewhere between 2 and 2.5 million paying users generating those numbers.

For context: Bandcamp took about a decade to reach a fraction of that scale. Most independent music platforms are still figuring out how to get to profitability. Suno got to $300M ARR in 24 months while simultaneously being sued by the Recording Industry Association of America on behalf of all three major labels.

What the "Say No to Suno" Letter Actually Says

The open letter was signed by Ron Gubitz (Executive Director, Music Artist Coalition), Helienne Lindvall (President, European Composer and Songwriter Alliance), and Chris Castle (Artist Rights Institute), among others. The core argument: Suno's model was built on unauthorized training data, and its commercial success comes at direct cost to the artists whose work was used without compensation or consent.

The letter also wades into the ongoing debate about "walled gardens" in licensed AI music. Suno's Chief Music Officer Paul Sinclair — a former Warner Music Group executive — recently took aim at the closed-platform model that Universal Music Group has pushed in its licensing deals. UMG's approach: if AI platforms want to license music, they can only use it within a controlled, restricted environment that limits what users can do. Suno's argument is that this is anti-competitive gatekeeping designed to slow down AI platforms that threaten major label control.

The artist reps who signed the letter weren't buying it. Their position: framing UMG's licensing restrictions as "walled gardens" is a rhetorical move designed to make copyright enforcement look like censorship.

Where the Lawsuits Actually Stand

The RIAA filed suit against both Suno and rival Udio in June 2024, alleging "mass infringement" of copyright on behalf of Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group.

Since then, the two cases have diverged sharply. Udio settled with both UMG and WMG and is building licensed AI music products in partnership with those labels. Suno settled with Warner in November — on terms that reportedly let users keep creating and downloading songs — but remains in active litigation with UMG and Sony. Suno has also been sued by Danish rights organization Koda and Germany's GEMA.

The contrast with Udio is worth sitting with. Udio took the settlement route with the two biggest holdouts. Suno settled with WMG but kept fighting UMG and Sony — the two labels most aggressive about AI licensing terms. Whether that's principle or strategy is hard to know from the outside. The outcome is that Suno is operating in legal uncertainty while posting $300M revenue numbers.

The Industry Hire Strategy

Whatever else Suno is, it's not naive about the politics of the music business. The company has been systematically hiring from within the industry it's in conflict with.

Paul Sinclair, former Warner Music Group executive, joined as Chief Music Officer in July 2025. Then on February 23rd — two days before the $300M announcement — Suno appointed Jeremy Sirota as Chief Commercial Officer. Sirota is the former CEO of Merlin, the global licensing body that represents thousands of independent record labels. He spent years negotiating licensing deals with Spotify, Apple Music, and every major streaming platform on behalf of indie labels who couldn't do it alone.

Hiring Sirota is a direct message to the independent music sector: Suno wants to negotiate, not just litigate. Whether independent labels and distributors read it that way is a different question.

The Real Problem Nobody Wants to Name

The music industry's response to Suno has been fractured, which is part of why it's been ineffective. The RIAA filed suit. Artist groups are writing open letters. UMG is holding out on licensing. WMG settled. Sony is still fighting. European rights organizations are suing separately. Nobody's operating from the same playbook.

Meanwhile, Suno has 100 million users and $300 million in revenue. Those users are not all professional music producers replacing human musicians. Most of them are people who couldn't or wouldn't have made music before — a genuinely new market. That's the argument Suno keeps making, and it's not wrong. It's just not the only thing that's true.

What's also true: the training data that makes Suno's output sound like music came from somewhere. The "somewhere" is decades of recorded music made by human artists who weren't asked and weren't paid. The legal question of whether that constitutes infringement is unresolved. The ethical question is less complicated, and the industry's outrage on that front is legitimate — even if the strategy for acting on it has been incoherent.

What This Actually Means for Independent Artists

Independent artists occupy an awkward position in this fight. Major labels have the resources to sue and the leverage to negotiate. Artist advocacy organizations can write letters. But independent artists making music outside the major label system don't have a clear seat at the table in either the litigation or the licensing negotiations.

The royalty pool argument from the "Say No to Suno" letter is the most direct concern: if AI-generated music floods streaming platforms, it dilutes the royalty pool available to human artists. Spotify and other streaming services pay from a finite revenue pool, and more tracks — especially AI-generated ones accumulated at scale — means less per stream for everyone else. That's not hypothetical. Streaming fraud using AI-generated content has already been documented at scale.

Making music independently means building something real in an environment that's getting more saturated, not less. The answer isn't to pretend AI platforms don't exist — they clearly do, and they're growing. It's to make work that sounds like it came from a person who actually lived something, because no AI model trained on existing music can fake that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

FAQ

How much revenue has Suno generated?

As of February 25, 2026, Suno CEO Mikey Shulman announced the platform had reached $300 million in annual recurring revenue and 2 million paid subscribers. Over 100 million people have used the platform since its launch two years ago. This represents a significant jump from the $200 million in annual revenue reported in November 2025.

What is the "Say No to Suno" campaign?

An open letter published in February 2026 by a coalition of artist representatives, including Ron Gubitz (Music Artist Coalition), Helienne Lindvall (European Composer and Songwriter Alliance), and Chris Castle (Artist Rights Institute). The letter describes Suno as a "brazen smash and grab" platform that used artists' music without authorization to train its AI model, and calls on the music industry to refuse engagement with the platform.

Is Suno still being sued by the major labels?

Suno settled its lawsuit with Warner Music Group in November 2025. It remains in active litigation with Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, following the RIAA's lawsuit filed in June 2024. Suno has also been sued by Danish rights organization Koda and Germany's GEMA. Rival platform Udio settled with both UMG and WMG and is now building licensed AI music products with those labels.

Who is Jeremy Sirota and why did Suno hire him?

Jeremy Sirota is the former CEO of Merlin, the global licensing body that represents thousands of independent record labels. He spent years negotiating streaming licensing deals with Spotify, Apple Music, and other platforms on behalf of independent labels. Suno appointed him as Chief Commercial Officer on February 23, 2026 — two days before the $300M revenue announcement — signaling an intent to negotiate licensing deals rather than rely solely on litigation outcomes.