Suno - Part 2

Last post I regaled you with the story of how I used Suno to create a song for the Farmersville Christmas Parade. I also said that you could listen on Alexa. So, how was that possible? I only learned about this because while prepping for the Christmas Parade, I was looking through my notes and recalled that I had written a Christmas song several years ago. Now, when I say I wrote a song, I am not really musically inclined, but I can write lyrics just fine.

I wrote the "Angels of Christmas" while traveling back home one a plane in 2021. I've tried messing with Garageband to see if I could create the accompaniment, but I just couldn’t get it right. But after using Suno to create the parade song, I thought, why not give it a try? So I entered a prompt into Suno, fed it my lyrics, and it kicked out a version of the song. I was taken aback by how good it sounded, but there were issues that required correction.

After several attempts and different prompts, I was able to get it to sound right.

I shared it with a few people and received positive feedback. A couple of people even suggested that I publish it so people could listen to it on Spotify or other services. This was a leap for me. Creating a song in Suno was one thing, but publishing it was another. Suno doesn't have a built-in publishing feature, so I had to figure out how to do it. I started at Soundcloud, but, apparently, they don’t allow AI-generated music to use their publishing platform. After a bit of research, I found DistroKid. This platform allows the uploading of your music to all the major (and some minor) streaming services. Whether you created the music yourself, or with AI, it doesn’t matter. All they need to know is do you hold the rights, and, thanks to Suno, I do.

So I submitted my song to DistroKid, and it was accepted. Within hours, the song appeared on Apple Music and Amazon Music. I was thrilled to be able to say, "Alexa, play 'Angels of Christmas' by Lee Whitfield" and she did!

I might have had an emotional reaction to this, but I didn’t let anyone else know. Something I had created was now available to the world. I was just blown away.

Have many people listened to my song? Not many at all. But that’s okay. I just enjoyed the process of creating it and sharing it with the world. I learned a lot about AI music creation and publishing in the process, which is just another thing that I can now do, thanks to my skunkworks projects.

A few days later, I uploaded and published the Farmersville Christmas Parade song. That has more listeners than my Christmas song, which is a little insulting, but I accept it.