AUGUST 18, 2026
Music industry battles AI companies over training data rights, licensing deals, and artist compensation
Major record labels filed copyright infringement lawsuits against AI music platforms Suno and Udio in June 2024, alleging the companies trained their models on copyrighted recordings without permission. Universal Music Group settled with Udio in October 2025, Warner Music settled with both Udio and Suno the following month, and Sony's lawsuits remain ongoing. Suno has acknowledged in court filings that its training data included "essentially all music files of reasonable quality that are accessible on the open Internet."
AI music platforms Suno and Udio, which allow users to generate complete songs from text prompts, have become the center of a legal and financial dispute over how the music industry should adapt to generative AI. Suno reported surpassing two million paid subscribers in February 2026, according to a post on X from its CEO and co-founder Mikey Shulman. The Recording Industry Association of America, representing major labels including Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group, brought the initial copyright cases alleging AI models were trained on protected recordings without authorization.
The lawsuits have produced a series of settlements and new disputes. Universal's agreement with Udio includes an option for artists to opt in or out of AI training. But those label-level deals have not resolved the question of whether individual creators — the songwriters and session musicians behind the recordings — will share in any settlement proceeds. The American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada filed suit in June against Universal and Warner, alleging the labels licensed recordings made by union members for AI use without compensating or crediting those musicians. Both labels have asked a federal court to dismiss the suit, arguing that AI compensation falls outside the existing Sound Recording Labor Agreement.
NPR's reporting emphasized the compensation gap between what labels may recover and what flows to individual creators. Songwriter and Grammy winner Tiffany Red, founder of the 100 Percenters advocacy organization, framed the concern directly: if a specific song she wrote was used in training data and a settlement was reached, she questioned what percentage of that settlement would reach her. Entertainment lawyer and class-action plaintiff Krystle Delgado argued the use of copyrighted music by Suno and Udio does not qualify as fair use, describing it as "piracy at mass scale."