Warner Music sued this AI company for theft—now it’s licensing its artists to them

Warner Music’s roster includes artists such as Ed Sheeran, Coldplay, and Dua Lipa.

Warner Music Group has signed a new licensing agreement with generative AI firm Suno. Starting next year, paying Suno subscribers will be able to create AI-generated songs using WMG artists’ content. In particular, users will be able to enter a simple text prompt to use the names, images, likenesses, voices, and compositions of participating Warner artists. This requires WMG musicians to opt in to the service and, according to Suno, could open new revenue streams.

The deal includes a settlement in an earlier copyright infringement lawsuit filed against the service just one year ago. It also comes just over a week after Warner settled a lawsuit and struck a separate licensing agreement with rival AI song-generation service Udio.

Warner, the world’s third-largest music company, represents artists like Dua Lipa, Coldplay, and Ed Sheeran. The company was among several music giants, including Sony and Universal, that sued Suno and Udio in 2024 for allegedly scraping artists’ music from YouTube without consent, seeking $150,000 compensation per work.

Suno is an AI platform for generating music and lyrics from simple text prompts.

Having pivoted from its original position, WMG claims artists will retain control over their likenesses and music. However, it has yet to provide any concrete details regarding this. Suno also says that artists will be fully compensated when users “build around” their sound. However, alongside the licensing agreement, Suno plans to use WMG’s music to develop new music-generation tools. This will reportedly surpass the capabilities of its flagship v5 model. Suno has also committed to significant platform changes, including a tiered pricing model and limited user downloads. Users will have to pay for audio downloads and can only play and share songs with the free version. This coincides with the acquisition of concert-discovery platform Songkick for an undisclosed amount.

Chief executive of Warner Music Group, Robert Kyncl, said the deal with Suno showed that artificial intelligence could be “pro-artist” when licensed to “reflect the value of music.” In particular, he said that “With Suno rapidly scaling, both in users and monetisation, we’ve seized this opportunity to shape models that expand revenue and deliver new fan experiences.” This reflects Suno’s success in gaining approximately 100 million users in just two years.

However, AI-generated content remains controversial. Paul McCartney, Sam Fender, Kate Bush, and Hans Zimmer recently recorded the LP ‘Is This What We Want‘—a silent record protesting copyright theft by AI companies. Emerging artists are up against it, too, with concerns about SoundCloud’s recent generative AI integrations and questionable Terms of Use update. It appears the future of original, human-made music hangs in the balance for established and burgeoning talent alike.

Loading poll