AI Vinyl Is the Dumbest Idea in Music Right Now
Suno wants to sell you a vinyl record of a song nobody actually wrote, and Mark is not okay with it. That’s the spark for this week’s episode, and once you hear the pitch, you’ll understand why it lit him up. The AI music platform is offering custom vinyl pressings, up to 46 minutes, with custom sleeve art, for $45 a pop. The catch is that the “song” was generated by a language model, not written by a person, and Suno is calling it a “genuine press record” instead of what it actually is: a novelty item built on borrowed sound.
The rant goes deeper than just annoyance at another AI product launch. Mark’s issue is with what vinyl actually represents. A record isn’t just a format, it’s a physical, engineered object. Bass levels have to be calibrated correctly or the needle skips the groove entirely. Real hands, real mastering, real craft go into every pressing. That process has meaning because it’s finite. There’s a fixed number of copies cut from one specific lathe, from one specific master, of one specific performance that happened exactly once. That scarcity is earned, not manufactured.
Suno’s pitch flips that logic inside out. The model can spit out an infinite number of “anniversary songs” or inside-joke anthems in the time it takes to listen to a podcast intro. There’s no scarcity on the input side at all. So instead, the company manufactures artificial scarcity on the output side, physically limiting how many copies of an infinitely reproducible product get pressed. It’s scarcity theater, dressed up to look like the real thing collectors have chased for decades.
Mark also isn’t buying the target audience angle. This isn’t being pitched to musicians, because as he puts it, no real musician is out there defending AI-generated music. The pitch is aimed at people looking for a quick birthday song or a friend-group inside joke turned into a “hit.” It sounds sweet on the surface, but the buyer doesn’t own the song, doesn’t write the song, and hands over $45 for something a model spat out on command. There’s also a wilder hook buried in Suno’s marketing: the idea that if a “bedroom producer” behind one of these AI tracks blows up, an early Suno vinyl pressing could become valuable someday. Mark’s response is pretty direct: find a real pressing plant willing to risk their reputation on stolen music, and hope they go under.
His advice if someone tries to sell you on this is simple. Save your $45. Go find someone you love, waste an afternoon burning a real mixtape, and support actual musicians making actual music. That’s the whole show, in a nutshell, every week.
From there, it’s on to the music, and this week’s five picks span dream-pop, retro power-pop, arena rock, vocal-driven alt, and moody indie.
First up is “Cleveland” from Squirrel Flower, the project of Chicago singer-songwriter Ella Williams. Mark admits the title alone hooked him (he’s a sucker for any Ohio shoutout), but the song backs it up. It’s chill, dreamy, and lyrically plays like a warning label for anyone who doesn’t appreciate Cleveland. Williams’ voice carries the track, and the whole thing feels lived-in and authentic from the first bar to the last.
Next is “Tell Me” from The Burkharts, a Buffalo band Mark discovered through a tour bill with Banda AL9, another act he’s featured before. Technically a 2025 release, it’s new to him, and it wears its influences proudly: strong melodies, tight harmonies, and a retro, Beatles-inspired sound that leans hard into 60s pop without apology. He name-checks Banda AL9, the Lemon Twigs, and Jelly Bricks as kindred spirits in this current wave of bands embracing that classic songwriting mold instead of running from it.
Track three is “Thousand Mornings” from the band Feel, off their new album What If Now. The guitar riff grabs immediately with Jimmy Page energy, and the drums hit with a John Bonham-sized punch. Mark calls out a specific production moment around the 2:45 mark where the snare opens up into something cavernous, the kind of sound he says he’d chase if he were back in a studio himself. The vocals are big and anthemic, and he confirms the band delivers the same power live.
Fourth is “Fur Elise” from Blondshell, her first appearance on the show despite Mark tracking her music for years through his usual discovery process. A friend of the show sent over a different track, “Violins,” which gets a shoutout too, but “Fur Elise” won the slot. What stands out is the vocal contrast: moody and lower in the verses, brighter and more powerful in the choruses, with real range and control driving the dynamic shift. The guitar work pulls an early Coldplay comparison, back when Mark still liked Coldplay.
Closing the episode is “Hound” from Hey Nothing, a track blending grunge sensibilities with indie songwriting and vocal phrasing that echoes Neutral Milk Hotel, though less extreme than something like In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. The harmonies are the real hook here, described as “perfectly imperfect,” with guitars that get crunchy in the choruses and pull back into something more delicate in the verses.
Between the AI vinyl takedown and five genuinely strong finds, it’s a full episode of Songs That Don’t Suck doing exactly what it promises: cutting through the noise and pointing you toward music actually worth your time.
