AI Music Generators and the Lawsuits, Explained: What Was Filed, Settled and Still Open

Start hereSuno and Udio both argue that training on recordings is fair use. Yet a Munich court, applying US law, found that Suno's training copies of six songs were not, in a judgment that is not final. So where do the cases stand?

01The cases at a glance

A complaint contains allegations, an answer contains a company’s position, and only orders and judgments are the court’s own words. Court records were read on 21 October 2026. The online docket service used warns that its copies may not be up to date.

Case	Where	Filed	Status (21 Oct 2026)
Record labels v. Suno	US federal court, Massachusetts	24 June 2024	Open; Warner settled
Record labels v. Udio	US federal court, New York	24 June 2024	Open for Sony; Universal and Warner settled
Sony and affiliated labels v. Udio (second case)	US federal court, New York	20 July 2026	Open
Universal, Sony and affiliated labels v. Suno (second case)	US federal court, Massachusetts	18 September 2026	Open
GEMA v. Suno	Munich Regional Court, Germany	21 January 2025	GEMA largely won at first instance; not final
Koda v. Suno	Copenhagen City Court, Denmark	4 November 2025	Referred to the Eastern High Court, per Koda
SOCAN v. Suno	Federal Court of Canada	2 September 2026	Open; specially managed, with a case management judge assigned on 15 October 2026

02The 2024 lawsuits

On 24 June 2024 the Recording Industry Association of America announced two suits brought by record companies. One was against Suno, in federal court in Massachusetts. The other was against Udio (the company is called Uncharted Labs) in New York. The plaintiffs were labels belonging to Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Warner Music Group.

The complaints allege that the services copied the labels’ recordings to train their AI models. The Suno complaint argues that nothing exempts AI technology from copyright law or excuses AI companies from playing by the rules.

Both complaints ask for damages of up to $150,000 per work infringed. That is the most US law allows in statutory damages per work, and only where a court finds the infringement was wilful; otherwise the limit is $30,000. The complaints do not state a total, and no US court has awarded anything.

03What Suno and Udio said

Both companies filed their answers on 1 August 2024, and both argue that what they did is fair use under US copyright law.

• Suno said its program was built by showing it tens of millions of recordings of different kinds. Those recordings “presumably included” recordings owned by the labels. That is a statement about training data, not an admission of infringement. In a blog post the same day, it wrote: “learning is not infringing. It never has been, and it is not now.”
• Udio said it would win because decades of court precedent show that no company controls a genre or style of music. It called its use “a quintessential “fair use” under copyright law”.

04The YouTube question

During the cases, a second issue emerged: where the training audio came from.

Both companies now say in their court filings that they took audio from YouTube. In near-identical words, each 2026 answer says the company “admits that it obtained audio data from YouTube for use as training data”.

The labels argue this broke a separate law against getting around technical protections. The Suno court described what the labels learned in discovery: that Suno got the recordings by downloading them from YouTube. The labels’ amended complaint calls it “stream ripping”.

The US courts have allowed those claims to go ahead, but that is not a finding that anyone broke the law.

In the Udio case, the judge wrote that deciding whether YouTube’s measures count as protections under the law needs more facts than the pleadings contain. In the Suno case, the court found the labels had made a plausible claim and let them add it.

05The settlements and licensing deals

Universal Music Group and Udio announced on 29 October 2025 that they had settled their copyright litigation. They said they would launch a new platform in 2026, trained on authorised and licensed music. The same day Udio told its users that downloads from the platform were no longer available.

Warner Music Group and Udio announced on 19 November 2025 a deal that resolves their copyright litigation. Udio added that the labels did not buy the company and do not own it.

Warner Music Group and Suno announced on 25 November 2025 a partnership that also settles their earlier litigation. Warner said Suno’s current models will be deprecated when its new licensed models launch, and that songs made on the free tier will not be downloadable. It also said Suno had acquired Songkick, the concert-discovery service.

None of the settlements disclosed their financial terms.

Suno has since announced a partnership with the music company BMG (12 August 2026). On 9 September 2026 it released its v6 models, which it says were developed with industry partners including Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe. Suno’s announcement does not say whether v6 was trained only on licensed music.

Universal and Sony’s second suit alleges that Suno developed v6 using their recordings. In its answer to that suit, Suno admits that it has said publicly that v6 “was trained on content licensed from our partners, interactions including creations and preference signals from our community, and the accumulated learnings from our team.”

We found no announced deal between Sony Music and either company.

06What is still open

Universal, Capitol and Sony v. Suno. Warner’s claims were dismissed after its deal. The remaining labels filed an amended complaint on 25 August 2026, and Suno answered on 1 September 2026. Both companies’ answers to the 2026 complaints argue the same way: “This is quintessential fair use.”

On 18 August 2026 the judge denied, without prejudice, a request to add 61,026 more recordings to this case, noting that fact discovery had been extended to 30 September 2026. The judge also wrote that summary judgment on Suno’s fair use defence “will likely resolve the predominant issue” in the case.

On 22 September 2026 the judge granted a joint request to extend discovery on the labels’ YouTube claim to 20 November 2026. The amended schedule lists 22 June 2027 for dispositive motions.

On 30 September 2026 a magistrate judge held a status conference on discovery disputes. The clerk’s notes record that the labels were to produce their AI output testing reports.

Universal, Sony and affiliated labels v. Suno (a second case). On 18 September 2026 the labels filed a new suit in the same court over 60,202 sound recordings, describing it as the second action against Suno.

The complaint alleges that the infringement continues in Suno’s v6 models: “On information and belief, Suno developed v6 using Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings”. Suno answered on 20 October 2026. Like its answer in the first case, it admits that Suno “obtained audio data from YouTube for use as training data”, and argues: “This is quintessential fair use.”

Sony v. Udio (the original case). After Universal and Warner settled, the court noted that the plaintiffs had fallen from 12 to 3, and the works at issue from 1,670 to 333. The court also refused to add about 30,000 more recordings, saying there was no requirement to do that in this lawsuit.

On 15 October 2026 the judge granted a joint request to extend the deadline for producing a sample of Udio’s prompt and output logs to 20 November 2026. On 20 October 2026 the judge moved the status conference set for 23 October 2026 to 11 December 2026.

Sony v. Udio (a second case). Sony and affiliated labels then filed a new suit on 20 July 2026 over 30,117 sound recordings. Udio answered on 27 August 2026. The earlier court order had described Sony’s proposal as adding 30,442 works; the documents do not explain the difference.

Independent artists, publishers and others have also filed separate suits against Suno or Udio since 2025. We have not read those complaints, so we do not describe them here.

07Outside the US

Germany: GEMA v. Suno. GEMA, the German music-rights society, sued Suno in Munich on 21 January 2025. On 31 July 2026 the court “largely granted” (our translation) GEMA’s claims for an injunction, information and damages over six well-known songs (for one, only its chorus).

The claims covered copies made during training in the US as well as the model and its outputs in Germany. Applying US law to the training copies, the court found they were not covered by fair use, because the works reappeared in the outputs.

The court’s press office noted that the case did not cover song lyrics, and that the judgment is not final.

Germany: GEMA v. OpenAI. In a separate case about song lyrics reproduced by a chatbot, not an AI music generator, the same court ruled largely in GEMA’s favour on 11 November 2025. According to GEMA, OpenAI has appealed to the Higher Regional Court in Munich.

Denmark: Koda v. Suno. Koda, the Danish music-rights society, filed suit against Suno on 4 November 2025, calling it the first lawsuit by a Danish rights organisation against an AI service. Koda says its case has been referred to the Eastern High Court because it raises fundamental questions about AI and copyright.

Canada: SOCAN v. Suno. SOCAN, Canada’s largest member-owned music rights organization, filed a statement of claim against Suno in the Federal Court of Canada on 2 September 2026. According to SOCAN, the claim alleges that Suno infringed SOCAN’s performing rights in the underlying songs.

It does so, SOCAN says, by making the platform available in Canada and by generating and streaming outputs that replicate songs in its repertoire. The claim lists a sample of 150 publicly available Suno outputs.

On 6 October 2026 an associate judge of the Federal Court ordered that the case proceed as a specially managed proceeding, with a case management judge to be appointed. SOCAN had asked for this with Suno’s consent. On 15 October 2026 the Chief Justice of the Federal Court assigned an associate judge as case management judge.

08The US Copyright Office’s view

On 9 May 2025 the US Copyright Office released a pre-publication version of a report on generative AI training. It concluded that various uses of copyrighted works in AI training are likely to be transformative.

But it also found a limit. Making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works, to produce expressive content that competes with them in existing markets, “goes beyond established fair use boundaries”. That is especially so, it said, where this is done through illegal access.

The report is the Office’s view. It does not bind the courts, and it does not analyse or decide these cases (it cites the Suno complaint once, in a footnote).

09What the terms say for users now

Suno (terms effective 3 September 2026): for paid plans, Suno “assigns to you all of its right, title and interest” in outputs it owns.

But it “makes no representation or warranty to you that any copyright will vest in any Output.” Free-tier users may use outputs only “for your lawful, personal and non-commercial purposes”. Suno’s policy post lists up to 7 lifetime trial downloads on the free plan, 20 downloads a month on Pro and 60 on Premier.

Udio (terms last revised 12 November 2025): “You may not download copies of any Output”, and “you may use Output solely for your personal and non-commercial purposes”. Udio’s terms say the company and its licensors own the output.

Terms change. If you use either service, read the current terms on its own site.

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How we checked this · Last checked October 2026

• Court records were re-read on 21 October 2026. CourtListener's docket pages refuse automated requests, so we read the docket entries through CourtListener's public search service. Its copies may not be up to date.
• SOCAN's Canadian case was read from the Federal Court's own court-files service.
• A complaint contains allegations and an answer a company's position; only orders and judgments are the court's own words. The page says which is which.
• The German court's wording is our translation of the Munich press releases.
• We have not read the separate suits by independent artists, publishers and others.
• This is an explainer, not legal advice.

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