Suno has hired Michael Chua to be its vp and general manager of Suno Live Experiences. As part of his job, Chua will be overseeing the operations of Songkick, the concert discovery platform which Suno acquired as part of its partnership with Warner Music Group last November.
According to Suno spokesperson, Chua’s team will “identify new ways to bring artists closer to their fans and help fans discover and connect with their favorite artists.” This includes “improving concert recommendations.” Particularly, Suno’s Chief Music Officer, Paul Sinclair, adds that a “central focus” for their live team will be “helping emerging artists, like those in our Spark program.” Spark, launched in June, offers grants, marketing support and access to Suno’s songwriting camps for young users of the platform.
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Prior to taking this newly created post at Suno, Chua was the vp of global business development and strategic partnerships at Ticketmaster, a division of Live Nation Entertainment. As part of his role there, he organized product partnerships with Google, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, Snap and more, helping Ticketmaster drive more ticket sales even outside of the Ticketmaster app. Most recently, Ticketmaster and Live Nation facilitated Spotify’s new Reserved program, which launched in May and identifies an artist’s most dedicated fans on the platform then holds two tickets for those fans when the artist announces a tour.
The move is part of Suno’s strategy to build “the first creative entertainment platform,” as Sinclair puts it. “Live music is a pivotal part of that.” On top of its AI music models, which can create songs from text, visual or audio inputs, the company also boasts a streaming arm with dedicated editorial curators and a short form video feed, similar to Tiktok, to get music makers interacting with each other’s work.
News of Chua’s appointment comes about a month after Suno’s biggest model launch to date — v6, a suite of AI music models that were its first made “in partnership with the music industry,” as the company put it. Specifically, these models were made with support from Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe, all of which Suno struck partnerships with before v6’s launch. In exchange for a revenue share from v6, the three music companies provided music to help train the Suno model.
While this was intended to be a step towards reconciliation with the music industry establishment, v6 prompted Universal Music Group and Sony Music, two of the major music companies, to file their second copyright infringement lawsuit against Suno. The two claimed that “v6 is not a fresh start,” as the labels’ lawyers put it. “It is the fruit of the same poisoned tree. Suno’s development of v6 continued, rather than ended, its unauthorized exploitation of plaintiffs’ copyrighted recordings,” citing concerns about possible “synthetic data” use to train the v6 models.
Chua said of his new role: “As Suno builds tools that help musicians create, reach fans and build lasting careers, live music has to be part of that. I see an incredible opportunity at Suno to help artists take a song from the first idea to the stage and bring their fans along the whole way. Bringing Suno and Songkick together opens up new possibilities to better connect artists and fans and ultimately create entirely new experiences that couldn’t have existed before Suno’s industry-leading tools.”
“We’re building the first creative entertainment platform, and live music is a pivotal part of that,” Sinclair’s full quote reads. “A central focus of our live experiences team will be helping emerging artists, like those in our Spark program, an incubator program designed to help independent artists bring their music projects to life and more easily create live experiences. Michael has spent his career at the intersection of tech and live music and I’m excited to build this team with his support.”
