Two AI Music Tools, Two Creative Personalities

In the last series, we learned usage tips related to Suno. However, there are many other music generation tools of the same type as Suno, and today we will start with Udio.

Udio is an AI music generation tool publicly launched on April 10, 2024. It was initially developed by a group of former Google DeepMind researchers, and the team behind it previously appeared under the name Uncharted Labs. Its core capability is very straightforward: users describe the style, mood, lyrics, or creative direction in text, and the system generates a complete music clip with vocals and arrangement. Upon its launch, Udio received a lot of attention due to its vocal texture, musical completeness, and prompt controllability, and it was quickly compared to Suno. Its investors and early supporters include a16z, UnitedMasters, as well as music industry figures like will.i.am and Common. In October 2025, Udio reached a partnership with Universal Music Group and began shifting toward a new platform direction that emphasizes licensing, copyright, and artist participation. Because of this, Udio is not just a tool for "entering text to generate songs"; it is more like a typical sample of the AI music industry moving from wild growth to the copyright negotiation phase.

Although everyone compares Udio with Suno, and after experiencing them, you will find that Udio and Suno are very different. This is because Udio responds to prompts differently than Suno—understanding this difference is the most important first step to getting started with Udio.

What you write is what gets executed

Suno has a sense of fault tolerance: you describe your intention roughly, and it will complete it on its own, even reading into things you didn't explicitly say.

Udio is a bit different. Judging from the user experience, it responds more directly to the specific words in the prompt—what you write is, in all probability, what gets executed. It is precise, but it also means the prompt needs to be written more carefully.

A single test can make this difference clear.

The same set of lyrics and the same prompt were given to both platforms. The prompt included the phrase "instrumental only".

In this test, Suno was not affected by this phrase; it mostly followed the lyrics I filled into the lyrics column to generate a result with vocals. Udio, on the other hand, generated an entire piece of pure instrumental music with no vocals.

Removing "instrumental only" from the prompt immediately restored normalcy.

At least in this test, it seemed to treat the phrase as a strong hint.

How to write prompts more effectively

Based on this characteristic, there are several types of words that need to be put into prompts with caution in Udio.

Use with caution

instrumental only / no vocals / no singing / ambient

The last one, "ambient", is relatively implicit—if there are only these kinds of atmosphere-leaning words in the prompt and "with vocals" is not clearly written, the result will sometimes head in a more instrumental and environmental direction.

If you want vocals, stating it positively is more effective than negative expressions:

Recommended wording

with vocals / expressive vocals / with lyrics

The principle is: describe what you want, not what you don't want.

In this test, Suno had a stronger sense of fault tolerance for this type of wording; Udio was more likely to execute literally, and negative words were sometimes carried out directly.

Differences in experience between the two platforms

Organizing the differences in user experience is not to say which one is better—the two have different design ideas and are suitable for different ways of use.

Prompt response tendency

Udio: More sensitive to keywords, executes close to the literal meaning; if the prompt is precise, the result is predictable.

Suno: Tends to match the overall intention, has a stronger sense of fault tolerance, and is suitable for getting results quickly.

Style selection method

Udio: Provides visual style tags to assist selection; click to add them to the prompt.

Suno: Mainly organizes style descriptions in the Styles field, and also has style enhancement and personalization assistance; overall, it feels more like expanding your description into a complete style direction.

Creative interface design

Udio: Clear functional partitioning, the creative area is separated from the work library; the path is slightly longer but the hierarchy is clear.

Suno: Streamlined design, the path from input to generation is short, making it quick to pick up.

Lyrics mode

Udio: Supports modes like auto-generated lyrics, custom lyrics, and pure instrumental, subject to the current interface.

Suno: Check Custom Mode / Instrumental; the interaction path is different but the functional coverage is similar.

Switching from Suno to Udio requires a bit of a mindset adjustment when writing prompts.

Instead of "roughly describing the intention and letting the AI play freely," look at every word as a strong hint first—what is written in will, in all probability, be executed. The cleaner you write, the more predictable the result.

In this Udio series of articles, I will discuss more comparative user experiences between Udio and Suno, further extending into discussions about the underlying logic and philosophical-aesthetic significance of current AI music generation tools. If you are interested in this content, hit follow and look forward to it!