A Reddit user claims they turned AI-generated music into a lucrative passive income stream, earning over $5,000 per month — despite their dearth of formal training in music production.
The user, who posted their story to the popular r/passive_income subreddit, shared their journey from total novice to successful music creator using AI tools like ChatGPT and Suno. The story may exemplify how technology is reshaping creative industries, allowing even those without traditional skills to monetize digital content, although responses in the comments to the hustle ranged from curious to suspicious.
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From Zero to $5K: Getting Started
The Redditor writes that they hadn't considered music a viable income source until a music agency offered to pay them to use one of their tracks on their anime YouTube channel. Intrigued, they spent weeks researching before stumbling upon Suno AI, a platform that generates music from text prompts.
By February 2024, they began experimenting with AI-generated tracks. By December, their earnings had surpassed $5,000 a month, all without singing, mixing or signing with a record label.
These are the steps they implement:
- Lyrics via ChatGPT: They generate short, emotionally resonant lyrics – under 3,000 characters – using the AI chatbot.
- Music made by Suno: After inputting the lyrics, they select a mood and style and create multiple song versions via Suno before picking the best one.
- Distribution: Using distribution platforms like DistroKid and TuneCore, they upload the final tracks to platforms like Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.
But making the tracks is only half the battle. The real key? Marketing.
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The Viral Playbook: Shorts, Reels, And $5 Ads
To drive streams, the Redditor operates six faceless YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels channels, each targeting niches like K-dramas, anime and K-pop. Their strategy is to curate trending clips from Instagram, TikTok and Reddit; edit them lightly; and then pair the clips with the AI-generated tracks. They scale the posting from 2-4 shorts to 6-8 shorts daily, and boost the clips with Facebook Ads targeting low-cost countries to increase visibility on YouTube.
While some tracks "flop," others take off — sometimes unexpectedly. "One lo-fi song paired with a sad anime scene earned $1,000 in a single month," the Redditor writes. "It was uploaded to a throwaway channel."
Is AI music "cheating" the system?
When asked if AI-made music is “cheating,” the Redditor pushed back: “I write the lyrics with the help of ChatGPT. The music is generated in Suno based on those lyrics. These are original creations. I treat it like a startup. I build a product, distribute it everywhere, and let the system decide what catches on."
But other commentators said it was misleading to imply any real creativity had entered the process: "Insulting to call this ‘writing' music. You’re not even writing the words yourself!" a commentator responded. Another commentator, a struggling musician, had stronger words for the poster, who responded that "I’m sorry that you are having it hard. The jungle has no rules."
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Several commenters pointed out that the original poster was selling a course on the practice, making them more skeptical of his claims: A redditor asks, "Why sell a course and saturate your niche field if it’s working so well? Especially if it’s scaling. This is always the question." The commenter also surmised that the poster's primary income came from the course, and not the AI music generation.
Volume Over Virality
Despite posting in a subreddit dedicated to passive income, the Redditor emphasizes that this is far from a “get-rich-quick” scheme. It's a volume game, and there's a lot of grinding involved: "This process isn't about going viral once. It's about compounding results through volume," they write.
And while their success raises a lot of ethical questions, it also underscores how AI is lowering barriers in creative fields, and that typically persistence — not perfection — is what can turn a side hustle into serious income.
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