Photo Credit: Malachi Brooks
Universal Music, Sony Music, and Suno have reportedly hit a hard impasse in their settlement discussions, where, unsurprisingly, the “walled garden” hang-up is said to be taking center stage.
Word of that resolution roadblock surfaced in a recent Financial Times piece – though admittedly, the rumored standstill doesn’t come as a shock. In the first place, Sony Music still has yet to join Universal Music and Warner Music in settling with and licensing Udio.
As ticked-off Udio users are apt to lament on Reddit, the AI platform barred song-generation downloads under the current major-label deals. That’s about as walled as a walled garden gets, and if the key concession didn’t convince Sony Music to cease litigating, a comparatively open-ended Suno settlement appears decidedly unlikely to materialize anytime soon.
Back to the Universal- and Sony-Suno talks, then, the parties’ “central disagreement” is said to involve sharing and distributing generated tracks beyond the service itself.
Especially because Udio was seemingly hit hard by its lawsuit-ending download restrictions – and because Warner Music previously settled with Suno – it’s unclear whether either side intends to give up any ground in the near future. (Technically, discussions are reportedly ongoing.)
That reality might point to a protracted legal battle – a particularly significant possibility given the growing stable of fully licensed gen AI music offerings. This includes Klay Vision (which has deals with all three majors but still hasn’t released its core product), ElevenLabs (which enables users to monetize creations via a marketplace), and Google’s Lyria 3, to name a few.
(Spotify’s own AI products are in the works as well, with the majors, Believe, and Merlin onboard.)
The possibility is also noteworthy in light of the aforementioned deal between Robert Kyncl-led Warner Music and Suno, which late last month launched “Voice Model” soundalike support.
(If one must replicate their voice via Suno as opposed to, say, rerecording machine-made vocals or steering clear altogether, one would be wise to give the platform’s terms a good read beforehand. “This license to your Content and Voice Model includes a license to your likeness, voice rights and other indicia of your persona that may be embodied in your Content or Voice Model,” a newly added section, first spotted by DMN, reads.)
At the intersection of Voice Model’s recent rollout, Warner Music execs’ ambitious revenue expectations for the Suno deal, and rumblings of artist interest in Suno, authorized soundalike replicas are presumably right around the corner. In any event, it shouldn’t be too difficult at all to identify AI-related windfalls in the publicly traded company’s forthcoming earnings reports.