Well, ‘user’ may be the wrong term. According to Hallwood Media, the music company founded by former Geffen Records and Interscope exec Neil Jacobsen, imoliver is a “music designer”. The most popular one on GenAI music platform Suno according to the company’s announcement that it has signed him to a recording deal. This is being touted as “the first signing of a Suno creator to a record label” – no, Timbaland doesn’t count – complete with an approving quote from Suno’s CEO Mikey Shulman. “This is a milestone – not just for Oliver, Hallwood and Suno, but for the future of music. A new creator emerging from a new platform, making new kinds of content, shows that the future of music will be more vast and more inclusive than it is today,” claimed Shulman.
The rightsholders who are suing Suno for copyright infringement will have a different take. However, if and when a settlement is reached in those lawsuits, which seems increasingly likely, Suno and similar services *could* be a new talent pool for the industry. In any case, you can listen to imoliver’s creations here – his debut single ‘Stone’ has more than 3m streams on Suno ahead of its 8 August release elsewhere. All eyes on whether Deezer flags it as AI-generated…
