The AI-and-music wave keeps coming. Another major has signed a licensing deal with Suno
Suno is one of the most popular AI music generators and also a company that’s been sued quite a bit for using copyrighted material to train its models. However, those lawsuits are slowing going away because the record labels seem to want to cut a deal.
When Universal, the biggest of the three majors, signed a deal with Suno earlier this month, speculation was that it was only a matter of time before the other majors joined in. Warner was next.
The deal, signed yesterday (November 25), came with a press release that read “[This deal will] “open new frontiers in music creation, interaction, and discovery, while both compensating and protecting artists, songwriters, and the wider creative community.” All lawsuits have gone away.
What does this mean? The press release says it “brings together Suno’s best-in-class AI capabilities with WMG’s artist development leadership and expertise at the intersection of music and technology.” It also tries to calm artists with this statement: “[Artists and songwriters] will have full control over whether and how their names, images, likenesses, voices, and compositions are used in new AI-generated music.”
Meanwhile, Suno says it will make “several changes to the platform, including launching new, more advanced and licensed models” scheduled for launch sometime in 2026. Warner CEO Robert Kyncel says, “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.”
Together, Warner and Suno say that they are “committed to forging a blueprint for a next-generation licensed AI music platform.”
Finally, there’s this statement from Mike Shulman, the CEO of Suno: ““Our partnership with Warner Music unlocks a bigger, richer Suno experience for music lovers, and accelerates our mission to change the place of music in the world by making it more valuable to billions of people. Together, we can enhance how music is made, consumed, experienced and shared. This means we’ll be rolling out new, more robust features for creation, opportunities to collaborate and interact with some of the most talented musicians in the world, all while continuing to build the biggest music ecosystem possible.”
What does this all mean for the music fan? Unclear. What is clear is that the business of making and distributing music is changing very, very quickly.
