Photo Credit: John (star5112) / CC by 2.0
Warner Music Group (WMG) is officially looking to toss the breach of contract lawsuit filed against it by the AFM, maintaining, among other things, that the agreement at the case’s center “does not cover AI licenses.”
WMG recently shed light on its dismissal arguments when requesting a related pre-motion conference. As first reported by DMN, the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) in June accused the major label (and Universal Music) of failing to cut its members in on Suno and Udio licensing revenue.
In the plaintiff’s view, those pacts constitute a “new use” under the relevant Sound Recording Labor Agreement (SRLA) – meaning that the AFM musicians who contributed to the licensed recordings are purportedly entitled to a piece of the gen AI pie.
Now, Warner Music has made clear that it’s on a decidedly different page. Ahead of an anticipated motion to dismiss, the major told the court that “Warner Music Group Corp. is not a signatory to the SRLA, does not itself own copyrights, was not a plaintiff in the copyright infringement lawsuits against Suno and Udio, and thus does not have licenses with Suno or Udio.”
“To the extent AFM seeks to assert a breach of contract, it is not against Warner Music Group Corp. That is alone enough to dismiss the complaint as to Warner,” the pre-motion letter reads.
Not stopping there, WMG built on the party-distinction dismissal argument by claiming that the SRLA, which was inked in early 2023, didn’t anticipate “compensation related to the licensing or other use of content for training AI models.”
Moreover, the AFM allegedly “filed this lawsuit in an improper attempt to place a judicial thumb on the negotiation scales” – referring mainly to an alleged effort to “create new contractual obligations out of whole cloth.”
Running with the idea, Warner Music in more words doubled down on the position that the absence of an explicit AI clause means there “can be no performance, breach, or resulting damage.” Moreover, the aforesaid new-use section of the SRLA is therefore inapplicable, per WMG.
“Where no agreement exists covering the new medium—as AFM concedes is the case here—Article 21 has nothing to point to, and there is no entitlement to payment,” the letter continues.
For these and a couple other reasons, the major is seeking a pre-dismissal-motion conference as well as a discovery stay pending the motion’s resolution. Discovery, WMG added for good measure, would involve “sensitive AI licensing negotiations and terms” that could set it back amid ongoing talks with the AFM on a fresh SRLA.
Time will tell whether Warner Music’s dismissal push is effective – though even if the motion brings about the desired result for the company, a PR victory could prove elusive.
To be sure, the UK’s Musicians’ Union last month backed the AFM action and described the complaint as one component of “a global fight” for gen AI compensation. With plenty of additional artificial intelligence tie-ups and products on the horizon, suit or no suit, the pushback will presumably intensify without contractual changes and a bit of extra pay for the union professionals at hand.