In a landmark move late Wednesday (October 29) evening, Universal Music Group announced that it has settled its copyright infringement litigation against AI music platform Udio.<\/p>\n
According to the announcement, the companies “will collaborate on an innovative, new commercial music creation, consumption, and streaming experience”. The new platform is set to launch in 2026.<\/p>\n
The statement added that “in addition to the compensatory legal settlement, the new license agreements for recorded music and publishing will provide further revenue opportunities for UMG artists and songwriters”.<\/p>\n
The news arrives just over a year after the RIAA, on behalf of all three major record companies, sued Udio and peer Suno<\/a>\u00a0for “mass infringement” of copyright.<\/p>\n UMG’s new agreement with Udio comes as Universal<\/b> and the other majors continue pursuing copyright claims against Suno<\/b>.<\/p>\n The Financial Times<\/em> reported<\/a> earlier this month that labels were nearing licensing deals with AI music companies.<\/p>\n UMG said that Udio’s existing product will remain available to users during the transition period “with creations controlled within a walled garden and the service amended in multiple ways \u2014 including fingerprinting, filtering, and other measures \u2014 before the launch of the updated service”.<\/p>\n The subscription-based platform will allow users to customize, stream and share music within what the companies describe as a “licensed and protected environment.”<\/p>\n \u201cThese new agreements with Udio demonstrate our commitment to do what\u2019s right by our artists and songwriters, whether that means embracing new technologies, developing new business models, diversifying revenue streams or beyond,” said Sir Lucian Grainge<\/b>, Chairman and CEO of UMG.<\/p>\n \u201cWe look forward to working with Andrew\u00a0who shares our belief that together, we can foster a healthy commercial AI ecosystem in which artists, songwriters, music companies and technology companies can all flourish and create incredible experiences for fans.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThese new agreements with Udio demonstrate our commitment to do what\u2019s right by our artists and songwriters, whether that means embracing new technologies, developing new business models, diversifying revenue streams or beyond.”<\/p>\n Sir Lucian Grainge<\/b>, UMG<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Andrew Sanchez<\/b>, Co-Founder & CEO of Udio, added: \u201cWe couldn\u2019t be more thrilled about this collaboration and the opportunity to work alongside UMG to redefine how AI empowers artists and fans.<\/p>\n \u201cThis moment brings to life everything we\u2019ve been building toward – uniting AI and the music industry in a way that truly champions artists. Together, we\u2019re building the technological and business landscape that will fundamentally expand what\u2019s possible in music creation and engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n UMG says the deal represents \u201cindustry-first strategic agreements.\u201d UMG also claims to be \u201cthe first company\u201d to enter into AI-related agreements with YouTube<\/b>, TikTok<\/b>, Meta<\/b>, KDDI<\/b>, KLAY<\/b> Vision<\/b>, BandLab<\/b>, Soundlabs<\/b> and Pro-Rata<\/b>, among others.<\/p>\n The settlement arrives amid intensifying legal disputes over whether AI companies can legally train their models on copyrighted music without authorization. In September, record labels amended their complaint against Udio to include allegations that\u00a0the AI company \u201cillegally scraped\u201d YouTube <\/b>videos<\/a>\u00a0in order to collect content on which to train its AI models.<\/p>\n That addition followed a separate copyright case against AI company Anthropic<\/b>, in which a court\u00a0ruled earlier this year<\/a>\u00a0that Anthropic\u2019s unauthorized use of copyrighted books counts as \u201cfair use\u201d under US copyright law, but the company\u2019s downloading of massive amounts of books from online pirate libraries does not.<\/p>\n On October 10, Udio filed a motion to dismiss the YouTube scraping allegations, arguing that US copyright law doesn’t criminalize downloading publicly available videos. The company’s lawyers contended the Digital Millennium Copyright Act<\/b> forbids the circumvention of \u201caccess controls\u201d that prevent users from reading, viewing or listening to certain content, but it doesn\u2019t forbid circumventing \u201ccopy controls\u201d that prevent reproduction of a work once it has been accessed.<\/p>\n In an October 24 response<\/a>, lawyers for the record labels said Udio\u2019s argument contains \u201cfatal flaws,\u201d\u00a0arguing that it treats the DMCA\u2019s prohibition on circumventing access \u201cas an all-or-nothing proposition,\u201d and that it treats \u201caccess controls\u201d and \u201ccopy controls\u201d as \u201ca binary choice. Both positions are wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n The labels are pursuing nearly identical claims<\/a> against Suno, which filed its own motion<\/a> to dismiss YouTube scraping charges, seven days before Udio using similar arguments.<\/p>\n The UMG-Udio partnership comes less than a month after the\u00a0Financial Times <\/i>reported<\/a> that UMG and Warner Music Group<\/b> were nearing licensing deals with AI music companies in a bid to \u201cset a precedent for how AI companies pay for music\u201d.<\/p>\n
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