The record label AI music lawsuits against Suno and Udio, filed in June 2024 by Sony Music, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group, have narrowed sharply: Warner and Universal have settled with both AI companies and signed licensing deals, leaving Sony Music as the only major label still litigating on both fronts. The remaining cases are now in active discovery, with a fair use ruling in the Suno matter expected to set precedent for the entire question of whether training generative AI on copyrighted recordings is legal.1Chartlex. Music Industry AI Lawsuits Tracker 2026
Who Sued Whom, and Why
The three major labels filed coordinated complaints on June 24, 2024. The suit against Suno, Inc. went to the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The suit against Uncharted Labs, Inc., the company behind Udio, went to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.2NBC News. US Record Labels Are Suing AI Music Generators, Alleging Copyright Infringement The Recording Industry Association of America coordinated the filings and called the alleged conduct “willful copyright infringement on an almost unimaginable scale,” pointing to statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work.3CNBC. Music Labels Sue AI Companies Suno, Udio for Copyright Infringement
The core allegation in both cases is the same. The labels say Suno and Udio ingested decades of copyrighted sound recordings to train their models without permission or payment, and that the resulting services can produce outputs indistinguishable from specific artists. Demonstrations submitted with the complaints included AI-generated audio resembling ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” James Brown’s “I Got You (I Feel Good),” and The Temptations’ “My Girl.”4Billboard. Major Label Lawsuit AI Firms Suno Udio Copyright Infringement
The labels also accused the companies of being evasive about their training data. Udio’s CEO David Ding had publicly described the training material as “publicly-available” and the “best quality music that’s out there,” while telling the labels in pre-litigation correspondence that the same data was a “competitively sensitive” trade secret.5RIAA. Udio Complaint
How Suno and Udio Have Defended Themselves
Both companies rely on the fair use doctrine. Suno acknowledged in a court filing that it trained on copyrighted songs and argued the training was lawful; on the day of the filing, co-founder Mikey Shulman compared AI training to “a kid writing their own rock songs after listening to the genre.”6LegalTech Talk. Suno Defends AI Training With Copyrighted Music Amid RIAA Lawsuit Udio has argued that its models learn patterns from music rather than copying it, and that its outputs do not directly substitute for original recordings.7Brooklyn Law School Sports & Entertainment Law Blog. Music Copyright in the Gen AI Age: Where Are We Now
In a separate class action brought by independent artists in June 2025, Suno pushed the argument further, invoking Section 114(b) of the Copyright Act. Because its tool generates entirely new sounds rather than stitching together samples, Suno argued, it cannot infringe sound recordings at all. Suno filed a motion to dismiss that case in August 2025, and the motion remains pending.8Music Business Worldwide. Suno Argues None of the Millions of Tracks Made on Its Platform Contain Anything Like a Sample
Who Settled and Who’s Still Fighting
By late 2025, two of the three original label plaintiffs had made deals with both AI companies.
Universal Music Group settled with Udio on October 29, 2025. The agreement included an undisclosed compensatory payment and new license agreements covering both recorded music and publishing. The two companies also announced plans to launch a subscription-based AI music platform in 2026, trained exclusively on authorized and licensed content. Until then, Udio agreed to operate inside a “walled garden” using fingerprinting and filtering tools.9Universal Music Group. Universal Music Group and Udio Announce Strategic Agreements for New Licensed AI Music Creation Platform
Warner Music Group settled with Udio in November 2025 and announced a similar collaboration.10Law360. UMG Recordings v. Uncharted Labs11Warner Music Group. Warner Music Group and Suno Forge Groundbreaking Partnership12TechCrunch. Warner Music Signs Deal With AI Music Startup Suno, Settles Lawsuit
That leaves Sony Music as the only major label still actively litigating against both AI companies. Universal also remains a plaintiff in the Suno case in Massachusetts.13Music Business Worldwide. Suno Asks Court to Block UMG and Sony From Expanding Copyright Lawsuit
Where the Suno Case Stands
The Suno case is before Chief Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV in the District of Massachusetts. No substantive rulings have issued. The summary judgment deadline is currently set for January 8, 2027, with a fair use ruling widely anticipated around summer 2026.14CourtListener. UMG Recordings v. Suno, Inc.1Chartlex. Music Industry AI Lawsuits Tracker 2026
The scope has grown enormously. The original complaint cited 560 copyrighted works. In May 2026, UMG and Sony moved to add 61,026 additional recordings they identified in Suno’s training data using the audio fingerprinting service Audible Magic. Suno opposed the expansion, arguing the labels delayed too long and that adding tens of thousands of tracks would deny it a timely fair use resolution. Fact discovery was scheduled to close on June 26, 2026, though the parties discussed pushing that to August.13Music Business Worldwide. Suno Asks Court to Block UMG and Sony From Expanding Copyright Lawsuit
A separate dispute concerns secrecy. Suno has moved to keep the total number of audio files used to train its model under seal, calling the figure a trade secret. UMG and Sony filed an opposition on June 5, 2026, arguing the public has a right to see the scale of the copying, and the news outlet Inner City Press has separately challenged the impoundment on First Amendment grounds. In its answer to the complaint, Suno already acknowledged that building its service “required showing the program tens of millions of instances of different kinds of recordings.”15Music Business Worldwide. UMG and Sony Urge Court to Reject Suno’s Bid to Seal the Size of Its AI Training Data
Where the Udio Case Stands
The Udio case is before Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein in the Southern District of New York. With Warner and UMG gone, Sony Music is the only remaining plaintiff.10Law360. UMG Recordings v. Uncharted Labs
The most consequential ruling so far came in April 2026, when Judge Hellerstein denied Udio’s motion to dismiss a claim under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The allegation is that Udio used a tool called YT-DLP to circumvent YouTube’s encryption and stream-rip copyrighted recordings for training. Judge Hellerstein found the complaint plausibly alleged that YouTube’s “rolling cipher” is an access-control measure under the DMCA, though he allowed Udio to renew the argument on a fuller factual record.16Justia. UMG Recordings v. Uncharted Labs, Case No. 1:2024cv04777
That ruling opens a second front. Even if a court eventually finds AI training itself qualifies as fair use, how the training data was obtained can create liability on its own. Circumventing technological protections to acquire recordings is separately actionable regardless of what happens next.16Justia. UMG Recordings v. Uncharted Labs, Case No. 1:2024cv04777
Why Bartz v. Anthropic Matters Here
The most significant AI copyright ruling to date came outside the music cases. In June 2025, Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California issued a split decision in Bartz v. Anthropic, brought by authors whose books were used to train Claude. Judge Alsup ruled that training an AI model on copyrighted works is “exceedingly transformative” and qualifies as fair use, but only when the copies were lawfully obtained. Anthropic’s downloading of millions of pirated books from sites like LibGen was held infringing, and the court said no amount of later transformative use could “cure” the piracy.17Copyright Alliance. Bartz v. Anthropic Order18Duane Morris. Northern District of California Decides AI Training Is Fair Use, Pirating Books May Still Be Infringing
That distinction now runs through the music litigation. If training material was legally acquired, training may be fair use. If it was pirated or obtained by circumventing access controls, it likely is not. The DMCA claim in the Udio case fits directly into that framework, and it explains why the labels have pushed hard on how Suno and Udio actually got their data, not only what they did with it.
What a Ruling Would Mean
Sony’s calculation in continuing to litigate appears strategic. A definitive court ruling that training on copyrighted recordings constitutes infringement would give every rights holder significantly more leverage in licensing talks. A ruling the other way, finding fair use, would weaken the labels’ position across the board.19Chartlex. Music Industry AI Lawsuits Tracker 2026
As of mid-2026, the Suno fair use question in Massachusetts remains the case most likely to produce that precedent. Summary judgment motions are not due until early 2027, and any decision will land against the backdrop of an expanding record, an unresolved sealing fight, and a parallel DMCA theory already surviving a motion to dismiss in New York.14CourtListener. UMG Recordings v. Suno, Inc.