Warner Music Partners with AI Music Platform Suno

Warner Music has officially partnered with a leading AI music creation platform, as reported by Rolling Stone. Yesterday, Suno announced that not only had it settled a lawsuit against Warner Music Group, but that the two companies were entering into a partnership.

The lawsuit, filed in 2024 by Warner Music Group (and following suit with similar lawsuits from Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment), against Suno and its rival AI music company Udio, accused the two companies of massive copyright infringement.

The lawsuits argued that both platforms had trained their models on extensive libraries of copyrighted recordings without permission — a practice the accused companies defended as fair use. UMG settled in October, and now Warner has settled too, on highly favourable terms.

Warner and Suno are now partnering on “next generation licensed AI music.” Robert Kyncl, CEO of Warner Music Group, said in a statement, “This landmark pact with Suno is a victory for the creative community that benefits everyone. 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.”

Suno CEO Mikey Shulman said the deal was “a paradigm shift in how music is made, consumed, experienced and shared.” In a post addressed to Suno users, he added “You’ll still be able to create original songs the way you love today. Our core experience remains focused on giving everyone access to powerful music creation.”

Suno, the engine behind most viral AI music, supposedly has over 100 million active users, and last week also received an additional $250 million USD in funding. Shulman promised Suno users will soon be able to access higher-quality creation models trained on licensed WMG music. There has been no comment regarding whether artists have any say in their music being used to train the models.