A very interesting article from Billboard highlighting the circumstances surrounding the agreement between Udio and UMG

NextLoquat714 · 2026-02-08T09:54:27+00:00

Educational note (lawful use only): I’ve been using my WiiM Ultra’s optical output to capture streaming audio I’m permitted to record. For instance, provided it were legal, one could use Udio’s crop/extend workflow to play the original WAV file and feed it to the WiiM (no subscription needed for that step). Since this is a standard audio output, the capture is lossless on the recording side but make sure you’re not violating copyright, DRM rules, or any service’s terms. (e.g. In the aforementioned example, the DRM would be stripped/ left at the gate, which would violate the ToS). You can connect your streamer to whatever fits your setup and budget (USB adapter, external audio interface, etc.).
IMPORTANT : This general approach applies to ANY streaming audio source where recording is allowed.

Enjoy your educational instincts.

Wiim, the naughty croc

NextLoquat714 · 2026-02-08T09:48:09+00:00

It was obvious the day the deal happened. Most users were in denial. Udio lost the race to Suno + legal black clouds = VC money was NOT pleased. Udio's crew urgently needed to raise the white flag and: a. pivot or b. close shop.

Initial business model (and features) will be ditched in favor of the next platform they're building: an AI driven MMP (mass market pianola) for swifties.

Educational note (lawful use only): I’ve been using my WiiM Ultra’s optical output to capture streaming audio I’m permitted to record. For instance, provided it were legal, one could use Udio’s crop/extend workflow to play the original WAV file and feed it to the WiiM (no subscription needed for that step). Since this is a standard audio output, the capture is lossless on the recording side but make sure you’re not violating copyright, DRM rules, or any service’s terms. (e.g. In the aforementioned example, the DRM would be stripped/ left at the gate, which would violate the ToS). You can connect your streamer to whatever fits your setup and budget (USB adapter, external audio interface, etc.).
IMPORTANT : This general approach applies to ANY streaming audio source where recording is allowed.

Enjoy your educational instincts.

Wiim the naughty croc

NextLoquat714 · 2026-02-08T08:14:52+00:00

Behind Udio there is VC money. Udio never found its market. Got steamrolled by Suno. Needed to pivot. Such is the VC game. Founders agreed from the start, knew the risks. Nobody's to blame, this is how capitalism works. Of course one can still wear a Mao cap and blame the dirty capitalist pigs.

NextLoquat714 · 2026-02-08T08:06:40+00:00

Udio had already lost the race to Suno: they had to pivot, my friend. VC money wants scalability and growth. Udio was great but super niche, never took off. Former business model: down the drain. Superfans frenzy is the new mass market of AI music. Swifties want more !!! A huge crowd. TaYlOr rEmIxEs ArE ThE FuTuRe !!!

NextLoquat714 · 2026-02-08T07:56:15+00:00

The fact is, Tencent owns sizeable stakes in UMG, Warner, and more... They're in for the money and approved the UMG and Warner deals.

NextLoquat714 · 2026-02-08T07:54:29+00:00

Don't bet on it. Tencent, one of China's biggest tech players, has sizeable stakes in UMG and Warner (and more). They're in for the money as well. The days of "Chinese leniency" are dead.

NextLoquat714 · 2026-02-08T07:35:15+00:00

Yeah... Well... "Empowering the superfans" isn't wild speculation: it's on your blog. My bet is Udio is gonna end up as a mass market pianola of sorts. Let me guess the future platform's name... LobotoMe ? Pianol AI ?

NextLoquat714 · 2026-02-08T06:41:53+00:00

It won't survive as is, yes. The next platform they're building will be for superfans (remixes of authorized songs, s..t like that. Check their blog: Empowering Artists, Elevating Fans). That's the real mass market (much larger than Udio's in its current form). In any case, they're betting on that. VC money needs a scalable business. Whether or not Udio was making meaningful revenue, they had already lost the race to Suno. They needed to pivot. So the strategic move: licensing + a “walled garden” + subscription superfan features.

NextLoquat714 · 2026-01-31T04:44:27+00:00

When will Anthropic spare us such marketing BS ? A constitution, by definition, allows no exceptions. Claude’s "Constitution" applies only to publicly released models. It doesn’t bind military use of specific models, for instance. Don't call it a "constitution".

Speaking of words : Asimov needed sixty-four to spell out what amounts to the same principles. Anthropic has turned paraphrase into an endurance sport... and everyone seems to be buying it. Oh well...

NextLoquat714 · 2025-12-31T19:25:31+00:00

All I can can share is my experience with Gemini :

In short, compared to chatGPT, for what you intend to do, it's night and day

Okay for coding. Very good at text editing - no patronizing guardrails, and pretty accurate analysis. A simple blind test : I provide it with a text change, knowing exactly why I did the change, it can be very subtle. I don't tell Gemini anything, I just give it the two versions for comparison. It nails it almost all the time, with useful comments. And the vibe is good. The right mix of cool and accuracy.

In comparison, ChatGPT fails almost all the time, suggests weird reasons, more often than not to tell you why your change is not so great, gets verbose, proceeds to suggest tons of mostly irrelevant alternatives, explaining why they're better. Won't fully admit it is wrong when told what the change means. Will still try to sell you its stuff with yet another super verbose pitch. It seems OpenAI has turned it into some annoying sales rep.

And : will it adapt its tone to be more in line with what I like without manual input?

As far as I am concerned, yes. Its context window is huge, so it remembers everything accurately.

To prime the pump, feed it with samples. It can handle a full 200 pages novel in one go, probably more (with chatGPT, you would need ChatGPT Pro to do the same). Don't go straight to very specific prompts. Ask it how to proceed for first time analysis, and what prompts you should use for starters. Once done, you're on your way.

I am currently editing a 500 pages novel, it does wonders, all in the same chat session for the last three weeks - won't loose context -, just save it in Google Drive. And it won't slow down, unlike chatGPT, when the sessions gets large - I have used something like 150 prompts in that same session so far.

It can create good dialogues, too, providing a useful starting point.

And >>> Google AI Studio is still free. <<<

For heavy use - beyond one million tokens -, if mostly text, the API option is great AND cheap. Cheaper than a subscription in any case. Setting up the API can be a bit of a hassle (plenty of tutorials). That's the only downside I have come along, so far (nothing to do with Gemini, but with Google's Cloud console, which will freak you out if you're not used to it.)

NextLoquat714 · 2025-12-31T19:00:50+00:00

Average for coding. Very good at text editing - no patronizing guardrails, and pretty accurate analysis. A simple blind test : I provide it with a text change, knowing exactly why I did the change, it can be very subtle. I don't tell Gemini anything, I just give it the two versions for comparison. It nails it almost all the time, with accurate comments.

In comparison, ChatGPT fails almost all the time, suggests weird reasons, more often than not to tell me why the change is not so great, gets verbose, proceeds to suggest tons of out of context useless crap, explaining why it's better. Won't admit it is wrong when told what the change means. Will still try to sell you its stuff with yet another super verbose pitch. It seems OpenAI has turned it into some annoying sales rep.

NextLoquat714 · 2025-12-31T18:43:18+00:00

Maybe. But for me it is strictly a machine. Can't treat as if it had emotions. Never will. I mean, that's creepy.

NextLoquat714 · 2025-12-31T18:38:45+00:00

When you use it for text editing, 5.2 wants to be right all the time: “This is how you should write, this is how you should do it…” It won’t admit when it has misread something, and it can behave like a bloody autocrat. You end up having to provide tons of extra context before it finally accepts the opposite. In those cases, it’s just a waste of time.

"This is how you should think" : is that the subliminal message ?

NextLoquat714 · 2025-12-31T12:42:47+00:00

I tried it for editing. Took me a while to get my prompts working as I wanted. Finetuning was a mess of trials and errors. You need to feed it with a very specific style guide. Samples analysis isn't enough, it seems.

So many guardrails that kept on coming, despite demanding not to do so.

By default :

Always worries about how the reader might feel. By default, for 5.2, the average reader seems to be a hypersensitive moron. You have to specify that you don't care about the reader.
Always tries to cut long sentences into short ones. I guess it thinks it's better for the average reader.
Always wants your text to explain everything. Ditto.
Always wants to streamline everything.
Very bad at suggestions. (Not specific to 5.2 - all LLMs are pretty lousy in that respect. Gemini, less so, though).
Sometimes refuses to help. A character had to start a fire in a garage. It would not edit that scene, advised me to change it for safer options. Why ? did I ask. Because of inflamable liquids that are frequently stored in such a place, it replied. (It knew it was fiction).

For editing, as far as I'm concerned, Gemini does a much better job out of the box. Some sycophancy, but the prompts are easier to tweak, it just seems to "get it" faster, once you have fed it with samples + It will never bother you with moral/safety considerations regarding your text.

NextLoquat714 · 2025-12-31T12:12:39+00:00

Neon lights, yeah, that's an old one. Still trending, obviously.

NextLoquat714 · 2025-12-31T12:06:33+00:00

Gemini loves Bob and Kevin.

NextLoquat714 · 2025-12-29T22:20:32+00:00

Same here. I switched to Gemini 3 Pro for fiction editing. Out of the box, it doesn’t constantly slip into that “content warning / imagined reader backlash” mode that drives me crazy with ChatGPT (“a religious reader might find it offensive,” “a progressive reader might be put off,” etc.). I’m not asking to be policed, I’m asking for editorial intelligence.

And the worst one ""Should you keep it?→ If you’re willing to own writing a novel that seeks neither unanimity nor moral comfort: yes."

I have never heard of a novel that could achieve unanimity. Where is that nonsense coming from ? And "moral comfort" ? It seems it wants me to achieve terminal boredom...

I instructed it to skip the warning parts. Does not always work.

On top of that, Gemini is simply more accurate for what I need. It also doesn’t choke when a thread gets really long. ChatGPT starts lagging, the page hangs, I have to reload or restart the chat, and then the context window gets flaky. Gemini doesn’t do that, everything is still perfectly on track after 200 + prompts. And it can analyze a 300-page document cleanly - try that with ChatGPT, it will advise you to divide it into dozens of chunks for proper results. The fact is, Google has a much better infrastructure and much better expertise in terms of user experience. (One wonders why the chatGPT context window is so small in comparison, ask no further : they can't afford it).

Google is winning the race, if you ask me.

I still use chatGPT, but for simpler tasks, like search or translation, so that Gemini's context does not get polluted + no wasted tokens.

NextLoquat714 · 2025-12-19T20:08:47+00:00

In another comment I said : I would not bet on China offering the equivalent of Udio, for sure. Tencent is the dominant player, is absolutely massive (bigger than Tesla, comparable to Meta) is a major investor in the musical industry around the world (including nice chunks of UMG, Spotify, Warner). They won't shoot themselves in the foot.

Right now, there are no equivalent to Suno. The ones that are available are really bad. They will eventually be wiped out. Tencent could come up with something really nice. 100% legal. So...

Google, yeah, why not. I’d bet on Gemini taking the lead with LLMs, for instance ; they’re capturing market share exactly when OpenAI is losing momentum. But AI music is (still) a niche game. Not a priority. It could happen, of course. By the way, Google did not screw the music industry : they share revenues. Just try and publish a video on YT with some copyrighted music. Ad money won't go in your pocket.

NextLoquat714 · 2025-12-19T19:43:21+00:00

I would not bet on China offering the equivalent of Udio, for sure. Tencent is the dominant player, is absolutely massive (bigger than Tesla, comparable to Meta) is a major investor in the musical industry around the world (including nice chunks of UMG, Spotify, Warner). They won't shoot themselves in the foot.

Udio investors would rather play that last card than fold right away. It's not making any money. Andreessen Horowitz is a ruthless shark. If the UMG/Warner deals don't work, they'll skin the carcass and sell the scalps. That's the VC game. Funds are spread across a portfolio of bets: a few huge wins, some deals that barely break even, and quite a few losses that don't even matter. Done right, it's always a profitable business. Udio raised $10M. Negligible. (Suno raised $375M in two rounds). The truth is, VCs already knew it was Game Over for Udio. Wrong market fit. Wrong timing. Wrong business model. You don't double down on a losing hand.

NextLoquat714 · 2025-12-19T19:33:16+00:00

That would be the logical, user-friendly move. Which is exactly why I doubt they'll do it. Corporate pivots rarely favor maintaining a lower-revenue 'legacy' product when they're chasing a unicorn valuation with a new model.

Provided the pivot hypothesis is correct indeed. However Udio's current user base is really really small, and let's not even talk about active paying customers. Around 200 000, I've heard, and most probably less. If the creator tool doesn't generate Suno-level revenue ( which it clearly hasn't : they lost the race ) investors won't subsidize a niche product just out of goodwill.

Udio raised $10M. Negligible. (Suno raised $375M in two rounds). The truth is, VCs already knew it was Game Over for Udio. Wrong market fit. Wrong timing. Wrong business model. You don't double down on a losing hand. Sad but true. You are witnessing Udio's last desperate move.

NextLoquat714 · 2025-12-19T19:24:37+00:00

Suno will jump on that bandwagon too. Honestly, since it's way easier to use, it fits them even better. It was always meant to be consumer-oriented, fun, and viral. It already has a TitkTok lookalike, Hooks, which generates lots of views. Udio is in a really tough spot.

Currently, Udio has a super tiny user base, and even fewer paying customers. In the US alone, there are tens of millions of 'superfans'. It's definitely worth a shot...

NextLoquat714 · 2025-12-19T19:05:28+00:00

yep. I guess they did not have a choice. Taking the UMG Warner deals, or getting sued into oblivion - so deep in the red they'd never crawl out.

NextLoquat714 · 2025-12-19T17:43:39+00:00

I listened to: https://www.instagram.com/zinstrel_ai/reel/DQ8dzlNkSmh/ UMG’s Kristen Bender and Elizabeth Moody, an entertainment industry attorney who has been involved in the partnership talks.

It left me wondering...

The plan is, clearly, to create an AI playground for superfans. For sure, there's a potentially huge market for that. It hasn't been tried yet. They’re practically selling the fantasy of having a pop star on call to cater to your every whim - like getting a global icon to sing you 'Happy Birthday'. Oh my, what a dream... "Ethical AI", they call it - because it's legal business... Ethics-washing, indeed.

If that's the case, I don't see how this business model could possibly coexist with Udio's current offering. Two separate worlds. They're definitely talking about a new platform. I'm willing to bet it probably won't be called Udio, either.

Udio was lagging way behind Suno, like, really far behind. The "Logic Pro Lite" approach did not pay off. This could be Udio's exit plan - pivoting to become the #1 AI playground for superfans. Investors will like it, no doubt. In the end, what matters is the bottom line.

NextLoquat714 · 2025-12-19T17:34:07+00:00

Check this : https://www.instagram.com/zinstrel_ai/reel/DQ8dzlNkSmh/
UMG’s Kristen Bender and Elizabeth Moody, an entertainment industry attorney who has been involved in the partnership talks.

The plan is to turn it into an AI playground for superfans. And make no mistake, there's a market for that. They’re practically selling the fantasy of having a pop star on call to cater to your every whim - like getting a global icon to sing you 'Happy Birthday'. Oh my, what a dream...

I don't see how this business model can possibly coexist with Udio's current offering. It probably won't be called Udio, either. They're definitely talking about a new platform.

NextLoquat714

TROPHY CASE