ACE Music Tested: Can a Free AI Music Generator Replace Suno?

00:00 Can a free AI music tool replace Suno?

The team behind this free AI music tool just said something wild about Suno. If the model changes or you lose access, your ability to create music can be affected overnight. That's their words, not mine. So, I tested if their free alternative actually holds up against Suno. Quick context before the test because it actually matters. This isn't some random free tool trying to ride the

Suno wave. The team behind ACEMusic.ai built the open-source model underneath it, which is ACE- Step 1.5. The argument straight from their own statement on the homepage is this, and you can read this here. Most AI music platforms today are closed ecosystems. Closed model one app one company controlling the whole access of it. If that company changes the model or shuts down

access your creative output is suddenly at their mercy and probably gone. The answer is an open model you can either use for free in the cloud or run entirely on your own machine. Today

00:58 ACE Music cloud version setup

I'm only testing the cloud version. The one with no install that you can start right away. Local install will be its own video and that's the one that's coming next. Enough talking. Let's dive right in. What do we get here? The letter from the builders. This is the one that I showed you already. Then we also have the GitHub repo. We will not go into detail in this video,

but in the next one where we actually go into the local version. You can check it out here if you want, but I will go into detail in either the next or the video after. What we're going to focus on today is the cloud version. You can log in either with your mail address. Then you can send yourself a one-time code. you know from most platforms these days and

you can also use Google login. In that case, I just created a new account. After you log in, you can see it like this. You can see the trending parts, the latest. You can listen to different songs here that other people created. I will not play any of those right now because we directly want to go into the create part. You can see this here. And if you know Suno then this might look

familiar. you can see this here their own model ACE-Step V1.5 XL Turbo is selected. You can also select the one without XL. But since this is all free, why would you want to go with the standard version if you can have the XL Turbo as well? This is pretty similar to Suno. As I said, you have the simple prompt, the song description. By the way, I have two videos out on Suno. would

probably soon do an update because they've been recorded quite some time ago. A lot has happened, especially the download limits, for example, which ACE Music in their letter from the builder says they will never limit the downloads. Let's see if that actually holds up. But as you can see here, this looks very similar to Suno. You can put in the lyrics, the prompt, the advanced

options here, the duration, the tempo, the time signature, the key, all of that is possible. Also, the remix function and the edit of songs. So, well, it's pretty much Suno but open source. We will create some songs together and we will try out the simple, the custom, the remix and the edit and see if this actually holds up and if this is actually a good alternative to Suno

as you can see and as you know if you watch the ElevenLabs and Voicebox videos. I'm ready to test.

03:49 Test 1: Simple prompt

I can hear the results. You can hear the results. Let's create some songs for free. I prepared this one here. Energetic pop anthem about cancelling a subscription and switching to something free. Triumphant a female vocals. Big satisfying chorus. Funny and over the top. Not sure if funny and over the top. makes sense. Let's kill that one. And let's just hit generate. Token expired. Wow,

that was a sad experience. Let's see what happens. it creates two songs. same as Suno. Let's see how long it takes the song title or idea. Basically, if you find something like Voicebox that can replace WhisperFlow or ElevenLabs, then you can cancel the subscription, save money. the same for the website that I built with Claude Code and Codex to replace my Wix subscription.

And now maybe ACE Music can replace your Suno subscription. We're about to find out. And here we go. We have two variations. You can see the model that it was created with. Here you have the option to publish. We have the defiant anthem and the defiance in the horizon. Let's click on it. See the lyrics. You can see this here. The details. There's no styles here because we didn't do the

05:25 Problem: Czech lyrics

custom. We just used the simple mode. And what the hell this I don't even know what language that is. This is definitely not English. let's hit play and give it a listen. In the meantime, I'll find out what the lyrics actually mean. And well, going to hit play in the meantime. Foreign

speech. Foreign speech. Foreign speech. Foreign speech. Foreign speech. Foreign speech. I checked with Claude. This is actually Czech the Czech language.

I'm not too impressed actually with the sound here and also with the the hallucination here that we actually got the Czech language. in the meantime, as you probably saw, I added in English language. So, I didn't just put in English, but in English language, so it knows that the lyrics should be in English. Let's see if that

actually worked. Also, Claude said that it didn't really make a lot of sense. so it doesn't really have to do anything with cancelling a subscription. So, let's see what we got here. Hey, we got English lyrics. This is acoustic guitar and percussion. Promises broken. Nothing to prove. The time is now to take a stand. Raise up your voice across the land. No more shadows,

no more lies. It's time to rise. It's time to rise. let me know in the comments if you think that this song is about cancelling a subscription and switching to something free. I guess because of the triumphant female vocals, it completely ignored the cancelling a subscription part, but you never know. At least we got

08:50 English prompt fix and first good result

an English song now. Woo! I'm going to hit play so we can actually give it a listen. Gives me some George Ezra vibes now. Clock is ticking, but the world won't move. Promise is broken, nothing to prove. The banners way, but the truth's out of sight. It's time to stand up and put up a fight. The streets are

empty, voices are loud, but they build a kingdom on a paper. The powers, but it's all pretend. Give me the chorus. The time is now stand. I'll give you the synth piece. To be honest, I kind of dig it.

Let me know what you think of this one in the comments. I mean, the syn the synth lead is kind of whack, but to be honest, I kind of feel like this is a banger. I mean, the lyrics completely suck. This is generic AF, but I kind of like the song. let's check out the other version before we go into the next test.

the lyrics are the same for both. The clock is ticking, but the world won't move. Promise something completely off. this one is horrible. Let's go back to the banger.

This definitely gets a heart. Well, need to download this. Let's see if the download works. Got my Got my speed up plugin activated. lowering. I can actually save this one. Let's see what file type.

this was an MP4. Would rather have an MP3 here or a WAV. we'll find out later. But that was test one.

12:08 Simple mode verdict

simple, completely hallucinated here with the Czech lyrics and it didn't have anything to do with the subscription. Probably this was because the prompt wasn't good for how ACE Music works. The triumphant probably killed all of what I wrote before or the big satisfying chorus that led to ignoring the subscription cancelling. For the custom part, I will prepare the lyrics now. So,

we don't have random stuff. Apparently, the lyrics generation isn't something you want to do in ACE Music, at least after the first couple of tests. But to be honest, when I worked with Suno and had something special in mind, I also always go in Claude. I use Sonnet for this, which is plenty enough. You don't need opus for text. Go in and write the lyrics with Claude

Sonnet. You can of course use ChatGPT, Gemini whatever. But I felt like for Suno it's the same as for ACE Music. generate the lyrics out outside, especially if the tool is hallucinating. Overall, some of the songs actually sounded good of the four ones in the simple mode. I felt like the drums and some of the pianos sounded too meaty, stylish, and not really high quality. But overall,

I felt like one of the songs really is a banger, except for the lyrics. Let's go and check out the

13:48 Test 2: Instrumental background music

custom. Test number two will be an instrumental. I prepared a prompt for this and we're going to try out the custom tab now. Lyrics. Write lyrics for the song or leave blank for instrumental. We want this to be an instrumental for my YouTube channel. Corporate tech background music. Subtle uplifting energy. Steady rhythm. No dramatic peaks. Unobtrusive loopable feel. Sounds great,

right? duration. Let's say we want this to be exactly 180 seconds, so 3 minutes long. And I asked Claude, which BPM, so which tempo, how many beats per minute is a perfect tempo for a for background music on my YouTube channel. And it said it would be something between 90 and 115. And probably 100 should be good for this video here. So, we're going to go with 100 BPM because below

90 it should feel too slow and everything else would rush or compete with my spoken words. So, this is how we're going to leave it. We're going to leave the key time signature or negative styles. We also have the option to go between robust and creative. We're just going to leave it as is. We leave thinking on. We don't spend any tokens. This is free. So, let's hit

generate. And here we go. This is a joke, right? Write lyrics for the song or leave blank for instrumental. Damn, I want an instrumental. Now it says please enter lyrics. You can't be serious. Let's try it like that. first bug. Let's see if that actually works with the lyrics there. Probably should have entered

instrumental here on top with the prompt. If we get any lyrics in here, then I will add instrumental here. But then again, all of this is completely free. And I was impressed with this one. We're going to keep listening to no. Here we go. It's already there. Uplifting tag loop. Do we have any lyrics? No, we don't have any lyrics. Let's see if we hear this. But, let's hit

play. It's 3 minutes exactly as we wanted. I like that. I'm going to check if this is actually 100 BPM as well. While we're listening to it. Yeah. Let's give it a listen. This is number one. on bro.

Oh gosh. Who who plays chords like that? Please don't use this. This is horrible. that one definitely failed. let's listen to the next one because we had one winner and one absolute fail in the last one. Let's see.

this is off. I don't know if you can hear this, but this is definitely off. This is horrible. This completely sucks. I'm going to hit generate and put in a key. For example, C major should be good for this kind of background music. That should feel uplifting.

But yeah, with the instrumentals, I'm not impressed at all. But then again, we had one banger and we have basically unlimited creations. Let's see. let's hit play. Let me know what you think. those there's always some chords in there that I slightly off. This is super weird.

I wouldn't put this in one of my YouTube videos. I got to be honest with you, even if this is super low in the background, people would always have the feeling there's something off with this guy. What's going on? those tests fail in my opinion. Let me know if you think otherwise. But I got way

19:36 Instrumental verdict

better results with Suno. Got to be honest with you there. that was test two instrumental with custom options here. Maybe it's a prompt. Let's make it better with their option to improve the prompt. Maybe before we go into test three, let's let's give him that. Maybe maybe maybe this will help and now we'll have a great instrumental for the background. This is pretty detailed.

Maybe it was just the wrong way of prompting. This is always something you got to find out. but I have the feeling with Suno, everyone can go in and you can just type in whatever. And of course, the better the prompts, the better the song. But you always get good results. And there was clearly something off with those songs. There were chords that didn't belong in there. And this doesn't have

anything to do with the prompts, right? So this is why I chose pretty easy prompts. Let's listen. Actually sounds better so far. that actually works. So, is this ACE Music? No. Would I put those very, very low in the background? Maybe.

It's better now. so the prompt improvement actually might work. It did actually put in a dose here, but overall I'm not impressed. as someone who just wants to go in there, try this out, and you should because this is free. Go in there, hit as many as you want to get better at this. But yeah, with just some simple prompts, the results are not as satisfying as I would have

22:16 Test 3: Custom lyrics, edit and remix

hoped. So now we going to go with the last test here. Let's paste what I prepared here. We're going to go and try again our subscription cancel song. I finally want to have it still pretty easy prompt which works great for Suno. But let's find out. Did I prepare anything else? No. We're going to clear everything here. Leave it open to or up to ACE Music to generate

this for us. As you can see here, let's see if it actually uses the lyrics that we provide. If it works like that, if it sees verse, chorus, verse, chorus, with the prompt, we're just going to hit generate. And we got the thinking on still. And as always with AI generation, you probably need a lot of trial and error to know how to get

the results that you actually want. Let's see if this actually works if we provide the lyrics with the different parts of the song which are really rather short verses and choruses. So we get a quick result. Let's see if that works. And if we will see the lyrics here on the side as well. And then we'll test the edit part. If we can actually change out verse two, for example, if it actually

only changes the verse and everything stays the same or not. So, three singers. Let's hit it. this is the same. Nice long intro. I'm free. I'm free. I cancel everything. Watch me sing without a single thing.

Not sure if this is an energetic pop anthem, but let's see. single thing. this one definitely failed. Just ignored the lyrics. I We just basically have the chorus and the verses gone. At least as far as

I can tell from skipping through it. Let's check the I'm free version. Music free. I'm free. I'm free. I cancel everything. Wild and free.

I'm free. No more featur.

26:20 Download and upload workflow issues

this was the I'm free. I'm not too impressed to be honest. Or drag from library. Recommend. Yeah, I'm trying to drag it people. Oh, can't do a right click. so this isn't working as well. This is kind of annoying. Got to be honest with you. Here.

save. so this is super annoying. The drag from library doesn't work. Maybe it is because this is Firefox and not Chrome. So, this might be the problem. I just let Claude convert the MP4 that I was able to download here from the right click to an MP3. So, it's in here. the ACE-Step-track file. This is basically exactly the same as this one. And

with the probably it'll not work because maybe now the drag and drop works. No, it just doesn't work. it. What I wanted to do is to do is swap out the verse two part if it actually stays the same. verse two took my money every single day. Now I found a smarter way to play. Love it. Let's hit generate. keep everything.

Just going to hit generate. Probably this will not work because this is uploaded. May have worked better if the drag and drop would have worked, which might be a problem with Firefox, not Chrome. Let me know in the comments if you followed along and tried this out and maybe this did work for you. So maybe there's a browser problem as Germans love

the Firefox browser. So, well, let's see if this is actually the same. with 150 we had the song. let's play. Sounds like a Coldplay ripoff. probably keep everything as is. Just swap out verse two. I'm 99.999% sure that this will not work. we'll give it a try anyways. Let me know if you

had success with the edit. I'm going to do the same with the remix. Make it even more upbeat and shorter. Let's hit those as well with the remix function. So, we can actually remix the song that we had. And we're going to listen to the keep everything as is just swap out verse two. This has become a jazz version. What's this one?

then last one, the remix feature. And then that's it for this video. This is way too long anyways, but we had a lot of fun with testing out ACE Music. Let's give it a listen. it's more upbeat. It's not shorter.

30:54 Final verdict

Horrible. So, this was the ACE Music cloud test. Actually, one of the first results, the simple was pretty good, even though it completely ignored the lyrics that I wanted. We got this absolute banger here out of it. after that we got a lot of fails. the instrumentals sounded horrible most of the time. Let me know what you think of ACE Music. Is

this an alternative to Suno for you? What you can definitely do is check it out because as of right now, this is completely free. It's open source. We're going to try out the local version. Also, there's some very good user interfaces that people build that might actually make the results better as well because you have a better user interface to interact with the

model below. But yeah, I'm going to finish off this video with this absolute banger here. let me know what you think of ACE Music in the comments. Should I also try out the terminal version of all of this? And there's a way to also train your own LoRAs. What that is, I'm going to go into detail in one of the next videos. Thank you so much for watching. See

you again in the next video. This is Time to Stand Up. A banger we created with ACE Music.

32:30 Bonus: the best generated AI song

And George Ezra says, "Hi, The clock is ticking, but the world won't move. Promise is broken, nothing to prove. The banners way, but the truth's out of sight. It's time to stand up and put up a fight. The streets are empty, voices are loud, but they build a kingdom on a paper shroud. The powers are calling,

but it's all pretend. This ain't the start. This is the end. The time is now to take a stand. Raise up your voice across the land. No more shadows, no more lies. It's time to rise. It's time. Thank you so much for watching. See you again in the next video. and let me know which tools or open-source alternatives I should check out that could maybe replace your paid subscriptions or software.