In 2024, all three majors sued Suno and Udio for mass copyright infringement. By 2026, most of them were business partners. Universal and Sony are still suing Suno.
In June 2024, Universal, Sony and Warner sued the AI music generators Suno and Udio. They alleged the startups copied decades of popular recordings to train models that could flood the market with competing songs. The companies answered that training AI on music is fair use.
Then the tone changed. Universal settled with Udio on October 29, 2025, and the two announced a licensed AI platform. Warner settled with Udio in November and with Suno shortly after, a deal that also saw Suno acquire Songkick from Warner. Suno launched its v6 models in September 2026 with licensed music from Warner, BMG and Believe.
Universal and Sony did not settle with Suno. On September 18, 2026, they filed a second suit in Boston, naming 60,202 recordings and calling v6 "fruit of the same poisoned tree." Sony is also still litigating against Udio.
The analysis: litigation as a negotiating tool
The labels were never trying to stop AI music entirely. They wanted to get paid and keep control. Lawsuits created leverage, and settlements turned that leverage into licensing revenue, new platform partnerships and artist opt-in systems.
The split among the majors is the real story. Warner chose early partnership. Universal partnered with Udio but kept fighting Suno. Sony kept fighting both. Each strategy is a bet on whether courts will rule for the labels on fair use, and on what a license is worth if they do.
For independent artists, the risk is a two-tier market. Big catalogs get licensing deals. Smaller rights holders may have little bargaining power over how their music is used in training.
👁️ Legal lens (non-lawyer view)
The central question is fair use. U.S. courts weigh four factors, and the fourth, harm to the market for the original work, is often decisive. The labels argue AI songs compete directly with human recordings.
The settlements may have quietly helped the labels' case. If Suno now pays Warner, BMG and Believe for training rights, it is harder to claim no licensing market exists. Universal and Sony make exactly this argument in the new complaint: Suno is now a paying participant in the very market it says doesn't exist.
There is also a separate claim under the DMCA anti-circumvention rules. Suno admitted in a filing that it used a tool called yt-dlp to obtain audio from YouTube. If a court finds that bypassed technical protections, it could create liability regardless of how the fair use question is decided.
Finally, the "poisoned tree" theory is untested. Can a new model trained partly on licensed music still infringe if it learned from earlier unlicensed models or their outputs? A ruling on that question would matter far beyond music.
❓What happens next ❓
Fact discovery in the first Suno case closed on September 30, 2026. On October 30, Suno asked the court to pause the second suit until key rulings arrive in the first. A fair use decision in this case could become a landmark for the entire generative AI industry.