The record labels’ AI lawsuit landscape has split in two. Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group have settled their copyright cases against Suno and Udio and are now partnering with both startups on licensed AI music platforms. Sony Music is the lone major-label holdout, pushing its cases forward toward what could become the first federal court rulings on whether training an AI music model on copyrighted recordings is fair use.
How the Cases Started
On June 24, 2024, Sony Music Entertainment, UMG Recordings, and Warner Records filed twin copyright infringement complaints against Suno Inc. and Uncharted Labs Inc., the company behind Udio. The Suno case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts (Case No. 1:24-cv-11611); the Udio case was filed in the Southern District of New York (Case No. 1:24-cv-04777).1CourtListener. UMG Recordings Inc v Suno Inc2RIAA. UMG Recordings Inc et al v Uncharted Labs Inc Complaint
The complaints alleged “willful copyright infringement on an almost unimaginable scale,” accusing the startups of copying decades of popular sound recordings to train generative models that produce music the labels said would “directly compete with, cheapen, and ultimately drown out the genuine sound recordings on which the services were built.”3Variety. Record Labels Sue AI Music Services Suno and Udio for Copyright Infringement The suits sought injunctions and statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work infringed.4BBC. Record Labels Sue AI Music Firms Suno and Udio
The AI Companies’ Fair Use Defense
Both startups built their defense on fair use. In an August 2024 filing, Suno acknowledged openly that its model had been trained on copyrighted music. CEO Mikey Shulman wrote that the company trains on “medium- and high-quality music” found on the “open internet,” including material owned by major labels, and compared AI training to a teenager learning to write rock songs by listening to the genre.5Mashable. AI Music Startup Suno Admits Using Copyrighted Music Says Its Fair Use6TechCrunch. AI Music Startup Suno Response RIAA Lawsuit Suno’s lawyers cited Authors Guild v. Google and Google v. Oracle for the proposition that “intermediate copying” to build a non-infringing product is protected, and added a copyright misuse defense accusing the majors of an unlawful monopoly over music production.7Silicon Republic. Suno Udio AI Music Lawsuit Record Labels Copyright Infringement Case
Udio made a parallel argument, calling the analysis of sound recordings to identify musical patterns “quintessential fair use” and noting that genres and styles are not themselves proprietary.7Silicon Republic. Suno Udio AI Music Lawsuit Record Labels Copyright Infringement Case The RIAA rejected the defense, calling the training “industrial-scale infringement” and saying there is “nothing fair about stealing an artist’s life’s work, extracting its core value, and repackaging it to compete directly with the originals.”5Mashable. AI Music Startup Suno Admits Using Copyrighted Music Says Its Fair Use
Universal and Warner Settled
Rather than wait for a ruling, UMG and WMG pivoted toward licensing. The deals rolled out across late 2025.
UMG and Udio
In October 2025, UMG resolved its lawsuit against Udio. The deal included a compensatory payment and licensing agreements covering UMG’s recorded music and publishing catalogs.8Copyright Alliance. AI Copyright Lawsuit Developments The companies agreed to co-develop a subscription AI music platform launching in 2026, where users can create remixes, mashups, and new tracks using the voices and compositions of UMG artists who opt in.9Universal Music Group. Universal Music Group and Udio Announce Strategic Agreements The service is designed as a “walled garden” where generated content stays on the platform rather than being exported freely.10Billboard. UMG Udio AI Deal FAQ
Warner and Suno
In late November 2025, Warner settled with Suno. Suno committed to deprecating its existing unlicensed models and launching new ones trained on licensed content. WMG artists can opt in to allow their names, voices, likenesses, and compositions to be used in AI-generated music. The platform introduced download restrictions: free-tier users can no longer download generated songs, and paid users face monthly caps.11Warner Music Group. Warner Music Group and Suno Forge Groundbreaking Partnership Financial terms were not disclosed.12Los Angeles Times. Warner Music Group Suno AI Lawsuit Settlement As part of the deal, Suno acquired the concert-discovery platform Songkick from WMG.
Warner and Udio
Warner also settled with Udio in November 2025, announcing plans for a joint subscription service powered by AI models trained on licensed music. Participating WMG artists and songwriters would be credited and paid, with the platform targeted for 2026.13Reuters. Warner Music Settles With AI Firm Udio Plans Joint Platform14Warner Music Group. Warner Music Group and Udio Collaborate to Build a New Licensed Music Creation Service
Sony Is Still Litigating
Sony Music is the only major label that has not settled with either company, and its cases against both remain active.15Courthouse News. AI Song Generator Startups Suno and Udio Angered the Music Industry
In May 2026, UMG and Sony moved to amend the Suno complaint to add more than 61,000 copyrighted works, a sharp expansion from the 560 works named in the 2024 filing. The labels identified their recordings in Suno’s training data using Audible Magic audio fingerprinting technology.16TechCrunch. Still Facing Copyright Lawsuits AI Music Generator Suno Raises Another 400M17Music Business Worldwide. Suno Moves to Keep Size of Its AI Training Data Sealed Suno asked the court to seal the total number of audio files it used in training, saying the figure is competitively sensitive while insisting it was not hiding which specific recordings were involved. Sony is also seeking to amend its Udio case to add roughly 30,304 allegedly infringed works; Udio opposed the amendment on the grounds that it would restart discovery, and a status conference is set for July 10, 2026.18Digital Music News. Sony Music Udio Lawsuit Expansion
The Warner settlement itself has become evidence in the Sony and UMG fight. The labels filed a 20-page objection to a magistrate judge’s refusal to compel disclosure of the WMG-Suno licensing agreement, arguing that the deal directly contradicts Suno’s fair use claim that no viable market exists for licensing sound recordings as AI training data. If the deal terms stay sealed, the labels want Suno barred from making that market argument at trial.19Digital Music News. Suno Universal Music Lawsuit
In March 2026, Suno filed a motion for summary judgment in the Massachusetts case, arguing its training is transformative fair use. The motion relies heavily on Bartz v. SoundAI, a Second Circuit decision upholding audio analysis for recommendation algorithms as permissible intermediate copying. Suno says its training similarly extracts musical patterns without storing or reproducing the copyrighted recordings. Judge Denise Casper has scheduled a hearing for July 2026.20AIVortex. Suno Udio Music AI Case Law
Independent Artists Have Filed Their Own Cases
The major-label settlements do not cover independent musicians, who have filed separate class actions arguing they lack the leverage to negotiate licensing deals and were left out of the compensation pathways the majors created.
- Nguyen v. Suno Inc. (N.D. Cal.), filed November 2025 on behalf of a proposed class of independent artists and small-label musicians. The complaint alleges Suno trained on over 40 million tracks, at least 60% from independent artists, without consent or compensation.20AIVortex. Suno Udio Music AI Case Law
- Woulard v. Udio (S.D.N.Y.), filed October 2025, alleges unlicensed use of recordings and compositions, stream-ripping from YouTube, and lyrics scraping, with additional claims under the Illinois Right of Publicity Act.21Copyright Alliance. Copyright News October
- Kim v. Uncharted Labs (S.D.N.Y.), filed January 2026, raising parallel claims against Udio.20AIVortex. Suno Udio Music AI Case Law
The independent-artist cases seek statutory damages of $750 to $150,000 per work and are in early stages, with class certification briefing expected in late 2026. Udio has moved to dismiss at least some of them, including one in the Northern District of Illinois where it argued the court lacks jurisdiction.22Law360. Udio Urges Illinois Court to Ax AI Music Copyright Suit
European Cases Against Suno
The legal pressure extends beyond the United States, and early European rulings suggest courts there may take a harder line on AI training than American courts have so far.
In Germany, the collecting society GEMA sued Suno in the Munich Regional Court in January 2025, alleging the company trained its model on six well-known compositions (including “Atemlos,” “Daddy Cool,” “Rasputin,” and “Mambo No. 5”) by circumventing YouTube’s technical protection mechanisms. At a March 2026 oral hearing, the court signaled it might follow its own reasoning in a separate case against OpenAI, where it found that AI models that “memorize” and reproduce protected works infringe copyright even when the reproduction is approximate. A decision is expected by mid-2026.23Vossius. Successful Hearing for GEMA Against Suno24CMS Law. GEMA v Suno Judgment Scheduled In that OpenAI case, the Munich court ruled in November 2025 that ChatGPT’s storage and output of copyrighted song lyrics violated German copyright law and that the text-and-data-mining exception did not apply when an AI permanently memorizes protected content.25Inside Tech Law. Germany Delivers Landmark Copyright Ruling Against OpenAI In Denmark, the rights organization KODA filed its own suit against Suno in November 2025 over the alleged use of Danish artists’ music.26Taylor Wessing. AI and Copyright Tracker
What Comes Next
No U.S. court has yet decided whether training a generative music AI on copyrighted recordings is fair use. The AI companies cite precedent protecting “non-expressive” copying for purposes like search indexing; the labels respond that generative models are different because their outputs substitute for the training data in the marketplace, cutting against fair use under the fourth statutory factor.27RIAA. Record Companies Bring Landmark Cases for Responsible AI The U.S. Copyright Office has been working through these questions in a multi-part report, with Part 3 on generative AI training published in pre-publication form in May 2025.28U.S. Copyright Office. AI and Copyright The RIAA is also pushing the NO FAKES Act of 2026, a bipartisan bill to protect voices and likenesses from unauthorized AI deepfakes and establish takedown procedures for platforms.29RIAA. RIAA Supports the NO FAKES Act
The two nearest milestones are the July 2026 hearing on Suno’s summary judgment motion in Massachusetts and the Munich court’s expected decision in GEMA v. Suno. Either could produce the first judicial answer to the question the record labels asked in June 2024.