Should a Music School Teach Suno? My Honest Response to Adam Neely

A few days ago, Adam Neely published a video arguing that the Berklee College of Music made a serious mistake with its "Bots and Beats: AI and the Future of Songwriting" course, built around the generative AI platform Suno and taught by an instructor who is allegedly a paid Suno advisor. As a creative technology educator with more than thirty years of experience and a current department head at a Media Arts and Design college, this controversy sits right at the center of my own expertise, so I felt I had to weigh in. And here's what might surprise you: even though I use generative AI constantly and defend it more than most people in my field, I agree with almost everything Adam said. The branding problem, the conflict of interest, the disrespect for the creative process — he's right about the big things.

But a few of his points deserve more context, and that's really what this video is about. I explain why being a little "out of touch" is actually a feature of good higher education rather than a bug, why the announcement's mashup of AI, blockchain, and the metaverse falls apart on closer inspection, and where Adam slightly misreads what "metaverse" even means in this context. I also dig into the ethics: the late-2025 Suno–Warner licensing settlement complicates the simple "Suno is stealing" narrative, while the announcement's bizarre choice to name Drake and Grimes only makes Berklee's messaging worse. Finally, I look at the actual survey data on how the general public feels about AI music — which is far more nuanced than outright hatred. Adam is right about the core of it; I'm just adding the nuance that a school like Berklee should have brought to the conversation in the first place.