Suno unveils copyright-compliant music AI models with major record label backing
Developing story first seen 2 hours ago
Suno has launched its v6 AI music model suite, its first "built in partnership with the music industry," and revealed plans for future remixing and sampling products using participating labels' catalogues. The launch follows a fresh licensing deal with French label group Believe, agreed just hours earlier, joining existing partners Warner Music Group and BMG whose music, alongside "user inputs," was used to train the new models. Suno CEO Mikey Shulman explained the process relies on users implicitly rating song pairs, which the company uses to refine what makes tracks "catchy" and "good," while product chief Jack Dolby stressed that label payments are for the wider partnership rather than for supplying training data.
The rollout comprises three products, v6, v6 Wild and v6 Mini, all pitched as Suno's fastest and highest-quality models yet, replacing retired earlier versions; downloads of older tracks were already restricted from 3 September under terms first set out in the WMG deal. New features include editing songs with plain-language instructions, building mashups from multiple sources, and generating music from text, audio, images or video. Suno, valued at $5.4 billion, still faces numerous lawsuits, including from Universal Music Group and Sony Music (filed 2024), a class action led by Jason Isbell, Mexican label Gerencia 360 Music, and Round Hill Music, and its product chief has confirmed v6's training data excludes UMG and Sony material.
- Suno launches v6 AI music models with Believe, WMG and BMG backing
- New models to enable remixing and sampling of partner labels' music
- Suno still faces multiple copyright lawsuits, including from UMG and Sony
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Suno is a company that makes software able to generate original songs from a text prompt, using artificial intelligence trained on large amounts of existing music. Its new v6 models have been launched with backing from three major rights holders, Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe, who have agreed licensing deals allowing their music to be used in training. This matters because AI music tools have been controversial, with record labels and artists arguing that earlier systems were built by using copyrighted songs without permission or payment.
Suno is still fighting several legal battles over how its older models were trained. Universal Music Group and Sony Music, two of the biggest labels in the world, are suing the company in the United States and are not part of the new licensing arrangement, while further claims have come from music rights organisations in Germany, Denmark and Canada, a publisher, and a group of musicians including Jason Isbell. These disputes centre on whether AI companies need permission to use copyrighted recordings and performers' identities, an issue that affects the wider music industry as it works out how to respond to generative AI.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Suno's supporters would argue that this launch represents genuine, meaningful progress: securing licensing agreements with Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe, retiring the older models trained without such deals, and building v6 from the ground up on licensed data and internal research shows a company taking rightsholders' concerns seriously and choosing the harder, slower path of negotiated partnership over continued legal confrontation. They would note that building sustainable commercial relationships with major rightsholders, rather than relying solely on contested fair-use arguments, is precisely the kind of industry-led solution critics of AI have long demanded, and that no company can resolve every legacy dispute overnight.
The case against
Sceptics would counter that the rebrand as "copyright-compliant" is premature and potentially misleading given that Universal Music Group and Sony Music remain active plaintiffs, GEMA has already won a ruling against Suno, and further claims are pending from Koda, SOCAN, Round Hill Music and musicians including Jason Isbell. They would argue that partial admissions regarding circumvention of YouTube's anti-downloading protections raise serious questions about how the earlier models' training data was actually obtained, and that presenting a company still facing a wide array of unresolved infringement allegations as having achieved compliance risks understating the scale of harm claimed by artists and rightsholders who have not yet reached agreements with Suno.
Full account
Suno, the artificial intelligence music generation company, has released a new family of models that it says is the first built in direct partnership with major record labels, marking an attempt to move the business onto a licensed footing after facing accusations of large-scale copyright infringement. The new range, called V6, comprises three models — V6, V6-wild and V6-mini — and replaces the company's previous generation of tools. Suno says the models were trained using licensed material supplied by Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe, alongside user data and in-house research, and that revenue from their use will be shared with those label partners, who will then decide how to pass payments on to their artists.
Of the three models, V6 is pitched as the dependable, general-purpose option for paying subscribers, designed to produce polished tracks across genres reliably. V6-wild is aimed at users seeking more unpredictable, experimental results; chief product officer Jack Brody said the model was built after hearing that musicians often want a creative sounding board rather than a single 'best' output. V6-mini is a lighter model made available to free users, which Suno claims outperforms rival companies' paid offerings. Alongside the new models, Suno has introduced features such as editing sections of a track using plain-language instructions, blending elements from multiple generated songs into a mashup, more precise sampling and beat isolation, generating music from images, video or other audio, and swapping individual lyrics without regenerating an entire song.
The launch follows a turbulent period for Suno, which along with rival Udio was sued in 2024 by a coalition of major labels, including Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group, over claims of copyright infringement on a massive scale. Warner became the first of the three to settle, agreeing a licensing partnership with Suno that paved the way for Tuesday's launch; BMG struck its own deal more recently, while Believe's partnership was announced on the same day as the new models. Universal and Sony, however, are continuing to pursue their lawsuit, and Suno also faces newer legal challenges, including a suit from Round Hill Music, a class action reportedly filed by singer-songwriter Jason Isbell, and action from rights organisations in Canada and Scandinavia. Suno executives, including founder and chief executive Mikey Shulman, framed the licensing deals as a template for cooperation between AI developers and the music industry, though they acknowledged that scepticism from artists remains and that trust will need to be earned over time.
Despite the licensing push, Suno's standing with parts of the music community remains uneasy. Reports note that the singer Mary J. Blige recently walked away from an advertising arrangement with the company after a deal was struck by someone claiming to represent her without her full knowledge or comfort, underlining the reputational risks Suno still faces even as it courts formal label partnerships. Brody has said the company intends to keep building goodwill with musicians and industry stakeholders, while Shulman has suggested the licensing agreements could eventually support further products allowing fans to remix, sample or otherwise interact with participating artists' catalogues. For now, the V6 rollout stands as Suno's most concrete attempt yet to reposition itself as a legitimate, revenue-sharing partner to the recorded music business, even as significant legal and public trust questions remain unresolved.
Where outlets differ
The Verge focuses most heavily on the product mechanics — the specific new editing, mashup and multimodal features — and quotes Brody at length on the design philosophy behind V6-wild, giving less space to the ongoing lawsuits.
TechCrunch (Source 2) frames the launch primarily around the business and industry-relations angle, emphasising the 'grow the pie' revenue-sharing rhetoric, and is the most pointed in cataloguing unresolved controversies, including the Round Hill Music lawsuit and the Mary J. Blige advertising dispute.
The Hollywood Reporter (Source 3) supplies the fullest timeline of label deals (Warner in November, BMG in August, Believe on launch day) and is the only source to mention the newly filed Jason Isbell class action and broader industry anxiety about 'AI slop' flooding streaming platforms.
Billboard (Source 4), via an interview with CEO Mikey Shulman, emphasises the forward-looking angle — future products letting fans remix or interact with participating artists' music — and is the only source to note lawsuits from the rights organisations SOCAN and Koda in addition to Universal and Sony.
Sources differ slightly on framing of scope: some describe the labels' claims as being trained 'exclusively' on licensed music (Hollywood Reporter), while others describe the training data more broadly as including licensed partner data alongside pre-existing user data (The Verge).
Coverage
- Engadget — Suno trained its v6 AI music models with help from Warner and BMG
- Variety — Suno Tries to Break into Music Mainstream With New Label-Backed Model ‘v6’
- The Hollywood Reporter — Suno Launches New AI Model Trained on Licensed WMG, BMG Tracks
- Billboard — Suno CEO Mikey Shulman Breaks Down V6 & Warner/BMG Partnership | On the Record
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