After a year of lawsuits, some of the major labels have started signing deals instead. Warner Music has settled with both Suno and Udio. Universal has settled with Udio, which it is helping relaunch as a closed platform that does not let users export AI-generated tracks. Under its Warner deal, Suno is scrapping the models it trained on unlicensed music and rebuilding on a licensed catalogue. Sony has settled with neither and is fighting both in court, gambling on a ruling instead of a deal. Separately, a handful of AI companies that want to operate legitimately have begun approaching the labels, the major publishers and the licensing hubs, MCPS among them, to buy the rights they need.
A label can only license what it controls, which is the sound recording, the master. Underneath that recording is a song – the composition and the lyrics – and that belongs to the writers and their publishers. An AI model trained on a recording is using the song as well, so the song has to be cleared in its own right, and a label’s deal does not do that for you. Your song is licensed through your publisher and your society, and that is the point where your permission, and your share of the money, come in. MCPS has said that before it puts anything into an AI deal it will write to all 35,000 of its writer members and ask each of them to opt in or stay out.
GEMA in Germany has built a licensing model meant to cover both the training and the AI output that comes out of it, and the EU is discussing the same approach. So far the AI companies have been slow to sign, which is part of why GEMA ended up suing them.
This part moves fast, with new settlements, suits and rulings most months. The things worth following are Sony’s court cases, whose result other companies will have to work around; the imminent German ruling on AI-generated music; the US argument over whether settlement money actually reached creators; and whether the licensed platforms launching this year pay anything through to the writers whose songs trained them.
