Warner Music Group is settling its landmark infringement lawsuit against AI music generation platform Suno, the companies announced Tuesday, with WMG becoming the first of the major record labels to officially partner with the company.
Neither WMG nor Suno disclosed financial details of the settlement or of the new partnership beyond saying that it would be “compensating and protecting artists, songwriters, and the wider creative community.”
“This landmark pact with Suno is a victory for the creative community that benefits everyone,” WMG CEO Robert Kyncl said in a statement of the new deal. “With Suno rapidly scaling, both in users and monetization, we’ve seized this opportunity to shape models that expand revenue and deliver new fan experiences. AI becomes pro-artist when it adheres to our principles: committing to licensed models, reflecting the value of music on and off platform, and providing artists and songwriters with an opt-in for the use of their name, image, likeness, voice and compositions in new AI songs.”
WMG and Suno said that with the partnership, Suno will be launching “new, more advanced and licensed models” for music generation, adding that Suno’s current models will be phased out. As was the case with the Udio settlement, WMG’s Suno deal is putting new limitations on downloads for users. Suno said that moving forward, only Suno’s paid tier subscribers will be able to download their creations off-platform, and paid users will also have download caps, having to pay more for more downloads. Such a move seems to be WMG seeking to address the thousands of AI tracks made on Suno that subsequently flood streaming services with content.
The deal comes over a year after WMG first sued Suno and rival AI music generator Udio alongside the other “big three” major music companies Universal Music Group and Sony Music Group, with the companies accusing the music generators of ripping millions of songs without permission to train their models. UMG was the first to announce a settlement of either company when it settled with Udio last month, and WMG followed with a Udio settlement of its own last week. Both UMG and Sony are still in litigation with Suno as of this story’s publication, and Sony is still suing both companies.
As part of the deal, the companies also revealed that Suno is acquiring Songkick from WMG, but the companies didn’t specify financial details of the acquisition.
The news comes just over a week after Suno had announced it had closed a $250 million funding round that values the company at $2.45 billion. That deal was led by prolific Silicon Valley VC firm Menlo Ventures, and also included NVIDIA’s VC arm NVentures and Hallwood Media, the music company founded by former Geffen Records president Neil Jacobson.
“Our partnership with Warner Music unlocks a bigger, richer Suno experience for music lovers, and accelerates our mission to change the place of music in the world by making it more valuable to billions of people,” Suno CEO Mikey Shulman said in a statement. “Together, we can enhance how music is made, consumed, experienced and shared. This means we’ll be rolling out new, more robust features for creation, opportunities to collaborate and interact with some of the most talented musicians in the world, all while continuing to build the biggest music ecosystem possible.”
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