Souna, a streaming and discovery platform built exclusively for AI-native music, will release its biggest update yet on Monday, Nov. 9. The update adds commerce, licensing, and label management tools alongside a redesigned listening experience, according to preview materials and details the company shared with Zinstrel. It arrives about a year after Souna's soft launch in November 2025.
Souna launched as a web-only beta from a two-person college team that includes co-founder Sam Varga. Artists create songs with outside tools, such as Suno or Producer.ai, and upload them to Souna. The platform counts a stream only after 15 seconds of listening, and those streams power its daily and weekly charts, the AI Sound Index for songs and the Souna Circuit for artists. They also drive certifications from Souna's AIRA (Artificial Intelligence Recording Association), which awards Bronze at 50,000 streams for a single and Gold at 1 million. In February, Souna introduced a paid Souna Verified tier and moved to a freemium model that gives free accounts five uploads a week, with tips starting at $1.
Stores, Memberships, and Pricing
Every Souna account now comes with a store. Free accounts can sell singles, EPs, and albums, offer downloads and standard licenses, and accept tips, and artists can start from 35 ready-made store layouts. The new Storefront+ tier adds packs, pre-orders, commissions, custom license terms, and sales tools including order bumps, one-click upsells, bundles, discount codes, flash sales, limited quantities, countdowns, and tracked links. It also adds display styles that present releases as vinyl, cassettes, gatefolds, or box sets, customer management with segments and email campaigns, and removal of the Souna watermark. Memberships, which let artists offer members-only posts and tracks, aren't sold separately: Souna Verified includes one membership tier, Storefront+ includes up to seven, and free accounts are limited to tips.
Souna Verified costs $5.99 a month or $59.99 a year and adds a verified badge, unlimited uploads, one membership tier, and streaming stats from Souna plus five other platforms. Storefront+ costs $19.99 a month or $199.99 a year and includes everything in Verified. Souna's cut shrinks as artists move up: the platform keeps 18% of sales on free accounts, 10% on Verified, and 4% on Storefront+. That fee applies to store sales, license sales, memberships, commissions, and invoices, and Stripe's card processing fee is charged separately. Payments run through Stripe, the artist is the merchant of record, and Stripe pays out directly to the artist's bank account.
Certifications and Licenses
AIRA certifications now cover both songs and albums, and Souna is spelling out how it counts plays. Any play of one second or more counts as a public stream. A play of 15 seconds or more counts as an engaged stream, and only engaged streams rank songs on the charts and count toward AIRA plaques. A nightly quality check holds back suspicious plays. Each certificate carries a code and a QR code anyone can use to verify it.
Licenses get the same verification. A Souna license is a signed agreement between the artist and the buyer, and the artist sets the permitted uses, territory, term, and exclusivity, including uses such as film and TV or paid ads. Each license has its own number and QR code, and a refund or chargeback voids it. Souna offers a basic template and plans to release more templates and educational material, but expects artists to define their own terms. The company said a lawyer has not yet reviewed the license framework and that a review is planned right after launch.
Souna doesn't decide or guarantee the copyright status of AI-generated tracks. Artists must confirm they hold the rights to what they sell, songs made with Suno must come from a paid Suno plan to be sold, and a license passes on only the rights the artist actually holds.
Labels, Personas, and Studio
For labels, Label HQ combines roster, releases, analytics, and team management in one console, and labels can run their own radio stations. Label HQ is free for managing artists. Labels that want storefronts for their roster can buy Storefront+ for teams at $14.99 a month or $149.99 a year per artist seat, with a three-seat minimum. Each seated artist gets Storefront+'s 4% fee, and Souna said it plans to lower that cut for labels and artists who pass a sales threshold it hasn't yet announced.
The update also introduces Personas, additional artist profiles under one account for different projects or styles. Free accounts get two, Verified accounts get seven, and Storefront+ accounts get 50. Personas show as linked to the main artist by default, but paid artists can unlink one so it stands on its own publicly, though Souna still knows who owns it. Artists manage them from a Personas section in Studio. Souna said the feature came from artists asking for a way to run several profiles and different kinds of songs without creating new accounts.
Studio itself is being reorganized into what Souna describes as five rooms, plus a Find tool and a single Monetization section. A Charts & Certifications view lists every chart a song appears on, with peak positions, chart history, and progress toward certification. Charts V2 adds peaks, chart movement, and a chart card artists can download.
For Listeners
On the listener side, Souna's mobile experience gets a new home screen, a bottom navigation bar, and a mini player that stays on screen while users browse. Swipe to Discover lets listeners pass on or keep songs one at a time, and the company says the feature learns their preferences as they go. Reels turn songs into short videos with an option to play the full track. Souna Radio offers genre stations as well as stations from artists and labels. Updated artist pages let listeners follow, subscribe, start a radio station, and visit the artist's store. The release also adds embeds for artists' own websites and platform-wide stats.
The Bigger Picture
The update comes as several platforms, including BitzAudio, KIVIO, Pomelo.fm, and Star Singer, build dedicated homes for AI-generated music. It also follows Suno's move this year to limit downloads in an effort to curb mass distribution of AI tracks to traditional streaming services.
Varga said the update is aimed at artists who want to treat their music as a business, without leaving behind those who use Souna as a hobby.
"AI artists have spent the last three years being alienated by platforms that were not meant for them, so we built our own ecosystem where they chart, get certified and get paid on the same terms as anyone else with no risk of the platform turning on the anti-AI switch tomorrow," Varga told Zinstrel. "This update is meant to give them a real business of their own for those who want to take it seriously, with their own store, memberships, and licenses while we also offer the ecosystem for those just trying to share their music with loved ones more easily and listen to similar songs from other hobbyists and enthusiasts. We still have a lot of work to do."