What’s It Like Being a Freelance Musician in the Age of AI?

As with other creative fields, AI’s impact on music has been huge. If there’s one company that has spearheaded the rise of AI in the industry, it’s Suno.

Suno is an AI music generation platform that allows users to create songs of their own by prompting. Since its release in 2023, its valuation has grown to $5.4 billion. Suno partnered with the Warner Music Group (WMG) in 2025.

In a blog post on the company’s site, Suno CEO Mikey Shulman claimed that the platform is being used by “millions of people making music for the first time,” arguing that “music creation is no longer the domain of a niche few.”

How does Suno work?

The platform has two modes for users who want to produce AI-generated music:

• Simple mode: With Suno’s free version, you can enter text to create a song (e.g., “create an indie pop song about starting a side hustle”). You’ll have 50 credits available each day, which translates to around 10 songs.
• Advanced mode: Suno’s advanced mode gives you more credits and far more creative control. You can upload lyrics (or have the AI generate them) and adjust your song, change the genre, and toggle lyrics, instrumentation, and style.

To use Suno’s advanced mode, you’ll need to sign up for one of their premium subscriptions: 1

• Pro Plan: This costs $8 per month. You get 2,500 credits every month and the commercial rights to the songs you generate.
• Premier Plan: $24 per month, with 10,000 credits per month, commercial rights, and access to the Suno Studio (software that allows you to download individual stems of songs and export them into traditional recording software).

Who is using Suno?

In February 2026, Forbes reported that Suno had 2 million subscribers.

It isn’t just newbies that are embracing AI tools—some seasoned producers are also turning to this technology. In a post on the r/SunoAI subreddit, one user who claims to have been writing and producing music for over 30 years said they were “massively impressed” by what it can accomplish.

In an interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune, Michael Hand, a lifelong musician based in California, said that Suno has helped him reimagine songs he wrote decades ago.

“For the first time, I can hear my old songs the way I envisioned them,” he said. “It is very exciting and inspiring.”

Side Hustles spoke with Ryan Peitzke, a freelance producer and audio engineer with over 20 years of experience writing music and collaborating with musicians. While Peitzke told us that he makes as much “real” music as possible, he’s also incorporated tools like Suno into his workflow.

“I use tech to speed things up, but I keep the groove raw and natural, and layer in organic live elements,” he said. “If you’re just being lazy and letting an algorithm spit out generic background noise, yeah, that’s an issue … but if you’re using it as an instrument or a tool within a broader creative vision, it’s not much different than any other studio gear.”

He went on to say that this is especially true of modern Virtual Studio Technology (VST) software, which is increasingly reliant on AI.

While many musicians have embraced AI, others see the technology as an existential threat, especially to those just starting out.

Side Hustles spoke with Tai Fronzaroli, a full-time freelance music producer and composer originally from Italy but now based in Los Angeles. Fronzaroli has created compositions for brands such as T-Mobile and Microsoft and also composes his own music. He told us that in his experience, “AI has almost completely wiped out the lowest tier of gigs.”

Higher-level gigs like scoring films or producing records for independent and mainstream artists are still out there, but those looking for smaller jobs, like writing jingles or creating stock music tracks, are likely to struggle.

One example is scoring music for video games. Alexander Brandon, a musician who’s written scores for video games like Deus Ex and Stormgate, told the magazine PC Gamer that he had submitted 50 resumes over the last year to receive just one interview.

“My take on things is: full-time is far less likely, high-paying full-time is probably more competitive than it’s ever been,” he said.

Fronzaroli told us the situation on platforms like Upwork is much the same. Many companies have started generating their own tunes instead of hiring freelancers.

“Now, all the people looking to spend the least amount of money possible are just using AI instead,” he said.

The ethical arguments against AI-generated music

In the eyes of many musicians, Fronzaroli included, AI companies like Suno are “committing piracy on a previously unseen scale.” He added that they’re “using all of humanity’s work without paying a single dollar in royalties, and calling it fair use.”

This is one of the central issues a large number of musicians have with AI-generated music. Companies like Suno have scraped data from streaming platforms and used it to train their AI models. Artists were never given the option to opt out of this scraping.

Suno has been subject to various lawsuits from organizations representing musicians. In July 2026, for instance, a German court ruled that Suno did not have the right to process songs by artists ​represented by the country’s state-mandated licensing agency Gema, and that they’d have to pay damages.

However, despite these legal challenges, AI-generated music seems like it’s here to stay. Even some people who were once opposed to tools like Suno, like Peitzke, have been won over, at least to an extent.

“When I first heard of Suno, I was actually legitimately pissed off,” Peitzke said. “Realizing the inevitable, though, I leaned into it and became obsessed with generating tracks in Suno and learning as many AI tools as I could.”

He told us he would “never release a track fully written by Suno,” but he believes that incorporating it into your workflow is worth trying.

“Start with your own music, then incorporate the AI,” he said. “There’s a chance the results may be far superior … to what either the artist or AI would make independently.”

While AI has created new challenges for music freelancers, it’s still possible to make money. In fact, Fronzaroli told us that in his network, not using AI tools has actually given him an advantage.

The trick, he said, is to find clients who have soured on AI.

“In my bubble, all the companies and agencies I work for are extremely strict on the topic and forbid their producers and composers from touching AI tools at all,” he said. “They remind us every few months with an email in a slightly bigger, bolder font each time.”

Why do some clients and companies avoid AI music?

Fronzaroli says that AI isn’t able to meet the demands of many clients, especially because it isn’t very customizable.

“The people I work with understand that AI music, regardless of quality, tends to be repetitive, predictable, and especially impossible to customize,” he said. “Because of this, they value the music I make for them because of the way I listen to, interpret, and translate their feedback.”

That said, Fronzaroli did acknowledge that “some companies just don’t care at the moment,” and plenty of clients are willing to accept AI-generated music. As a freelancer, you need to look for the ones that aren’t.

How has AI affected the tasks music freelancers complete?

While AI hasn’t eliminated all jobs for freelance musicians, according to Fronzaroli, it has impacted the type of gigs you can find, along with what clients will expect from you.

Suno has even spurred the creation of an entirely new job for freelance musicians—cleaning up AI-generated tracks.

“We now have a new category of clients who think they have the composing skills of Beethoven because they told AI to make a song for them,” he said. “They think they can pay a producer a few dollars to fix all the problems and glitches in the disjointed stems the AI generated.”

On marketplace platforms like Fiverr, freelancers are charging $20–$30 on average to professionally mix and master tracks people have made with Suno. Fronzaroli told us that he doesn’t reject these kinds of clients, but will “charge the same as” he would if he were “making a song from scratch.”

While this does offer a new income stream for those looking to make money from music production, Fronzaroli said that for him, personally, it’s a small piece of the puzzle, and his strategy is to “keep prioritizing high-quality opportunities.”

Peitzke also told us that he’s actually found more opportunities since tools such as Suno launched, but that its rise has affected the rates he can command.

“Oddly enough, the easiest and some of the highest-paying work I’ve done relied heavily on AI, but that was around a year ago,” he said. “Nowadays, pricing is drastically dropping as the work becomes so much easier.”

Peitzke said that when these tools first became available, they weren’t as easy to use, which netted him a lot of work helping people produce tracks. However, the software is more user-friendly now.

“As AI gets more and more user-friendly, professionals have to adapt and constantly pivot,” he said. “Instead of fighting the tech, I lean into building production pipelines where AI handles the heavy lifting or rapid prototyping, leaving me to steer the creative vision.”

For people looking to get into freelance music production, marketplaces like Upwork might seem like good places to get started. Unfortunately, Fronzaroli told us that they’re not the easiest places to find gigs in the age of AI.

“I only use Upwork as another way to source clients, alongside other platforms, agencies, companies, and contacts I’ve built over the years,” he told us.

Fronzaroli has earned over $200,000 on Upwork, but he acknowledged that it is “definitely not easy” to build a successful operation on the site.

“The platform has changed a lot in recent years,” he said. “Freelancers are now incentivized to invest money and time into advertising themselves and competing with each other.”

“These days, it’s more something I turn to when I have downtime between my other projects.”

Fronzaroli is a “Top Rated Plus” freelancer on Upwork, which is the highest tier available. This gives him an advantage in landing gigs. If you’re just getting started, it’ll take you longer to land worthwhile opportunities.

Even with his success on and off Upwork, Fronzaroli admitted that freelancing full-time can be unstable.

“As a full-time freelancer working with a lot of different people, my experience is having weeks where I don’t sleep and weeks of absolute emptiness,” he told us.

As AI continues reshaping the music industry, you may find yourself wondering whether it’s still worth trying your hand at freelance music work at all.

While Fronzaroli told us he can “definitely understand the fear” aspiring freelance musicians face, he said you can still find opportunities in 2026.

“The best ones will always find opportunities,” he said. “Luthiers were replaced by mass-produced instruments a long time ago, but a great luthier today, working with passion and for the love of the craft, can still make a living, and sometimes even a very good one.”

Despite AI tools like Suno making music creation more accessible, experienced freelancers like him argue that enough clients still value collaboration, customization, and professional expertise.

Anecdotally, some producers on Reddit report similar experiences. In a post on the subreddit r/BetterOffline, one music producer said that they’re “busier than they’ve ever been.” They partly attribute this success to the fact that many industry professionals don’t like AI.

“Several of my clients have told me flat-out that they’re hiring me specifically because they don’t want to use AI,” they said. They went on to state that, much like Fronzaroli told us, freelancers often now have to rework AI-generated songs that didn’t meet their clients’ expectations.

If you’re still interested in freelancing as a musician, producer, or audio engineer, here are a few steps you should take when starting out:

Build your network

When you’re starting out with a music side hustle, it can be tricky to know where to find work. While Upwork is still an option for new freelancers, Fronzaroli said it’s important to “consider every opportunity.”

“One of my very first gigs here in the US came through one of my UCLA teachers,” he said. “He mentioned he was working on a project, so I kept in touch, and once I started working, I proposed myself for it, and I still work with him to this day.”

You can also make connections at music studios, concerts, or through online communities on Reddit, Instagram, and Facebook.

Peitzke told us that the majority of his work “definitely comes from Upwork.” He said that many of his clients became regulars, thanks to the networking he did earlier on.

“I work more consistently with some regulars now, and I don’t have to hustle as much in the fight-or-flight proposal arms race,” he said. “It takes time to build momentum and weed through the noise, but having a centralized platform to land initial gigs and build a client base is a solid place to start when you have few other options.”

Find a niche

Another way to increase your chances of success with a freelance music side hustle is by avoiding direct competition with AI tools.

Instead of competing for the cheapest production work, focus on developing specialized skills that clients value, such as a unique sound, deep knowledge of a genre, or the ability to collaborate closely on a project.

For example, if you work as a producer specializing in a particular genre, an audio engineer working with podcasts, or a composer creating music for indie filmmakers, you may stand out more than someone offering general music production services.

Peitzke said he’s tried to diversify his offerings over the years to find more opportunities. “I’ve also probably learned more in the last year about sound design, music, and business in general from this necessity to adapt in a time where artistry and freelancing can often feel like a hopeless endeavor,” he told us.

Be persistent

Above all, persistence is the most important thing when starting any music-based side hustle. Having a passion for what you do is fundamental to any creative gig, especially when doing it on a freelance basis.

For Fronzaroli, it took a while to build his network and get to the stage where freelance music production was his full-time gig. He told us that if he were to start from scratch again, he’d “do whatever works.”

“I always try to put my foot in every door,” he said. “And if it’s worth staying, I keep going … do what you love because you’re curious to learn every day, because you want to get better and improve, because you need to do it; the results will arrive one way or another.”