AI Music Startup Suno has announced a strategic partnership with major label Warner Music Group (WMG) that will require Suno to use licensed songs to train its models.
The deal marks a significant departure from the "train on everything" approach that has defined much of the generative AI boom. Suno will build a new generation of models using Warner’s extensive music catalog, according to the announcement.
Additionally, the collaboration creates a way for Warner artists to opt into the platform. This will allow Suno users to generate tracks using specific voices, likenesses, and styles of Warner Music artists in exchange for compensation to the artists.
Suno lauds the move. Critics and copyright advocates say the AI music startup was thrust into it because of the lawsuit.
I discussed this development, and what it means with SmarterX and Marketing AI Institute founder and CEO Paul Roetzer on Episode 183 of The Artificial Intelligence Show.
From Lawsuits to Licensing
For months, Suno and Warner Music Group have been embroiled in litigation over the use of WMG artists’ copyrighted songs without permission or compensation.
The Suno deal suggests the solution might be integration between the warring companies.
“There might be some wins in court from both sides,” Roetzer says of the AI companies and traditional creative media companies. “But at the end of the day, the artists, the media companies, they're going to see the opportunity for the revenue from this.”
The agreement essentially forces Suno to retire its old models, which were trained on vast amounts of unlicensed data, and shift to systems trained on approved, licensed songs.
For industry observers such as Ed Newton-Rex, a vocal critic of exploitative AI training practices, this is a validation of copyright litigation. It proves that legal action can compel AI companies to pay for the copyrighted data they use.
The Future of Model Training
Beyond the legal implications, this partnership highlights a technical shift in how AI models could be built moving forward.
Instead of the "scrape everything" from the web method, AI companies will be forced to innovate. They’ll need to figure out how to achieve high-quality outputs using smaller, cleaner, and legal, licensed data.
“I think a lot of licensing deals are going to be signed,” says Roetzer. “I think the AI model companies eventually find ways to train on less data, more highly curated data through these licensing deals to get similar capabilities from the models.”
Still Uncertainty for the Little Guy
This victory doesn’t cover everyone in the music business.
Independent musicians and smaller labels who aren't covered by this agreement still face the threat that their work might be used to train previous models. Plus, while superstar artists could see significant revenue from licensing their voices to AI, smaller artists might not.
“It is definitely a direction I see more and more of these lawsuits probably going,” says Roetzer.
The Bottom Line
The Suno-Warner Music deal is a bellwether for the AI industry.
When pushed, AI companies can and will transition to licensed data models. For business leaders and marketers, it is a reminder that the legal foundations of generative AI are still settling. The tools we use tomorrow might look (and operate) very differently than the ones we use today.
Mike Kaput
As Chief Content Officer, Mike Kaput uses content marketing, marketing strategy, and marketing technology to grow and scale traffic, leads, and revenue for Marketing AI Institute. Mike is the co-author of Marketing Artificial Intelligence: AI, Marketing and the Future of Business (Matt Holt Books, 2022). See Mike's full bio.