What do you think will happen?

 

Warner Music Signs AI Deal with Suno and Settles Legal Dispute

Warner Music Group has become the first major label to announce a deal with AI company Suno. The agreement covers the licensing of songs for a new Suno model and settles the previous legal dispute between the two parties.

Silas Schwarzkopp, November 26, 2025


Under what both parties describe as a "groundbreaking" agreement, Suno and Warner Music Group (WMG) will collaborate on the "next generation of licensed AI music." They also promise compensation and protection for artists, songwriters, and the creative community.

Artists and songwriters will now have control over whether their names, likenesses, voices, or works can be used in future AI-generated music. According to WMG CEO Robert Kyncl, creators will have an opt-in option. The partnership with Suno will also create a new revenue stream. Documents recently surfaced showing that Suno has spent only $2,000 on training materials to date.

The announcement of the deal also reveals details about Suno's future. The AI company plans to implement several changes to its platform and tools in 2026. Among other things, a new model will be launched, while the current one will be discontinued. Furthermore, downloads would be placed behind a paywall, and even paying users would only have a limited number of downloads available.

In a brief statement, Suno and Warner announced that they had settled their legal dispute, which had been ongoing since June 2024, without disclosing details of the agreement. Therefore, questions regarding the amount of the out-of-court settlement and the recipients or distribution of the sum remain unanswered. Meanwhile, the lawsuits filed by the two other major labels, Universal Music and Sony Music, are (still) ongoing.

In addition, Suno will have to defend itself in court starting in January against a lawsuit filed by GEMA (the German performing rights society).

"This groundbreaking deal with Suno is a victory for the creative industry, from which everyone benefits. Given Suno's rapid growth—both in terms of user numbers and monetization—we seized this opportunity to develop models that increase revenue and offer fans new experiences," affirmed Robert Kyncl, CEO of WMG.

```` AI will thus become an "ally of artists" if the WMG's principles are followed. "The commitment to licensed models, consideration of the value of music both on and off the platform, and the ability for artists and songwriters to consent to the use of their name, image, likeness, voice, and compositions in new AI-generated songs," Kyncl concluded.

Robert Kyncl had already outlined the principles for AI deals in connection with the recent partnership with Udio: "Our approach is clear: legislate, litigate, license." Kyncl's three Ls.

These principles are: legislate, litigate, license. Suno CEO Mikey Shulman adds: “Our partnership with Warner Music opens up an even bigger and richer Suno experience for music lovers and accelerates our mission to transform the role of music in the world by making it more valuable to billions of people. Together, we can improve the way music is made, consumed, experienced, and shared. This means we will introduce new, more powerful features for music production and create opportunities to collaborate and interact with some of the world’s most talented musicians, while continuing to build the largest possible music ecosystem.”

In addition to the licensing deal for the new AI tool, WMG and Suno also agreed, almost as a side note, that the AI company would acquire the concert platform Songkick, which came under WMG’s umbrella in mid-2017.

Source German Language: www.musikwoche.de/recorded-publishing/warner-music-schliesst-ki-deal-mit-suno-und-legt-rechtsstreit-bei-e40481e9a554789f11b8ffa10e7525c3

 

I think abolition of human artists' rights is the term?

 

Well, looking ahead to 2026, Warner Music Group and Suno are teaming up to drop fresh, licensed AI music models that’ll replace the old ones. Artists get full say on how their voices, names, and tracks get used, making sure they get paid and protected and free users can stream and share tunes, but downloads will need a paid subscription.

Plus, Suno’s grabbed WMG’s Songkick, making it easier for artists to connect with fans by blending AI music with live shows.
It could become a game-changer moving AI music into a legit, artist-friendly, and money-making space.

we will see..

 

Interesting enough: Suno is selling only yearly packages with a discount
(knowing I bet, that they will cancel Suno early in 2026 and bring up a "Suno legit" or sth. leaving their customers in the rain)*
An a**hole is an a**hole is an a**hole against everyone.



*Where I live it's called "Nachtigall ick hör Dir trapsen!"

 

Basically they will replace their model with new "licensed" ones. What does that mean in pratice? Your outputs on Suno will be necessarily copyrighted. If their future models aren't royalty free, you will need to share your profits with the AI model or... BOOM... DMCA.

If it's royalty free, it will be just like a "Splice 'X Artist' Signature Sound Pack" in an AI prompt model.

In any situation, it sucks to deal with copyrighted AI outputs. Suno couldn't claim an output copyright before, even if they stated on their terms to not use free songs on streaming. Because, by law on most countries, AI outputs are not subject of copyright claims. Now they managed to make it copyrighted ;)

I will leave you with this quote.

 

Last edited: Nov 26, 2025 at 9:21 PM

They're just covering their backs, suno is useless if you can't write better stuff than that then use it, otherwise the human brain can do way much better, AI 's good for calcuations, better, weapons, buildings, drugs etc, it'll replace film makers und actors which isn't necessarily all bad, if so, it'll mean we have got something better or else why would we bother, it won't make Art because it has no opinion simple as that, my stuff is all about my opinion, nobody elses, i know best, not so fo AI.

 

True at the moment. But we are in AI development phase 1.0
Those who are not truly gifted artists will have big problems in the future—or rather, they will have even bigger problems earning money from music.

 

I am not quite sure how WMG will get their artists interested in allowing the use of their music for AI. The amount of money they will receive will not be that great, plus they will probably hurt themselves in the long run if AI can produce music that is basically resembling their work. I can't really see how it will benefit the artists.

 

They are laundering of theft into legitimacy.

Is the LAION-5B dataset history repeating again, but now with sound. that dataset which powers Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, Sora,and the rest explicitly warned against commercial use. "Research purposes only,". Every major AI company ignored it and built billion-dollar businesses anyway. When sued, German courts protected LAION's non-profit status while commercial entities feasted on the data. The scam was perfect: create a "research" liability firewall, spend $2,000 scraping the entire internet, then watch corporations monetize it. Scrape first, legitimize later.

Suno already trained on copyrighted music without permission. Got sued. And now they're settling and calling it a "groundbreaking partnership." Except when WMG says "artists will have control," they mean Warner decides if your catalog trains the AI that replaces you. The theft already happened. This is just a retroactive license to legitimize it.

Artists like Benn Jordan are developing adversarial noise techniques to poison training data, but that's individual self-defense against systemic theft. So we need to reorganize around our own industry or we are pretty much done. The labels chose the machines. Streaming platforms are complicit. The legislative game is rigged—Kyncl's "three Ls" say it all: Legislate, Litigate, License. They write the laws, sue us into submission, then offer pennies.

We either build a parallel music economy outside their control: direct platforms, decentralized distribution, cooperative ownership, etc, or we accept becoming training data for our own obsolescence. But I think our generation are totally unprepared to win this one cause we have been socialiced into individuality and uncoperative approachs to almost anything. Maybe my son's gen will see how they crush us and react in time, maybe...

 

Through pressure...

 

They are running in circle. After 5 years only of public AI, the AI bubble is already too big :
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/nov/20/stock-markets-ai-nvidia

The whole system is plagued by his own nature.
And it will end sooner than later.

And frankly ... i'm waiting for this day since i'm 10 years old.
And i'm 50.
I hate lies, it is my nature.

Humanity is creating for millenaries.
It is not going to end.

But "the market" ...