Suno Launches Label-Backed AI Music Models Amid Lawsuits
Suno Launches Label-Backed AI Music Models Amid Lawsuits
The News
AI music company Suno is rolling out a new family of models trained with licensed music from Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe — the first time the industry's most-sued AI music platform has built its technology in cooperation with record companies.
The three models — v6, v6-wild and v6-mini — began reaching users Wednesday, Sept. 9. Suno's older models are being retired.
Suno says the deals share a portion of its revenue with its label partners. Chief product officer Jack Brody told The Hollywood Reporter he would not say how many songs or which artists' tracks were used in training, or how much the partners are being paid.
What the Models Do
v6 is the flagship, available to Suno's Pro and Premier subscribers, which the company calls "reliable, precise" and able to deliver "polished music across every genre and style." v6-wild is the deliberately "less predictable" variant for experimentation. v6-mini is the only one free accounts get.
New features include editing a section of a song with plain-language commands, replacing a single lyric without regenerating the whole track, building mashups from multiple sources in one request, more precise sampling, and generating songs from audio, images and video.
Timeline
A group of major record labels including Warner Music, Universal Music Group and Sony Music sue Suno and rival Udio, accusing them of copyright infringement at a "massive scale."
Warner drops its suit in exchange for a licensing agreement it said would give its artists "full control" over how their voices and music are used in AI-generated tracks — Suno's first partnership with a major label.
BMG signs its own deal with Suno. In the same month, Round Hill Music sues the company, refusing to settle, according to Variety.
Variety reports Mary J. Blige ended an advertising partnership with Suno after "someone who presented themselves as Ms. Blige's official representative" made a deal she was "uncomfortable" with. Suno pulled the ads.
Suno and Believe Music, owner of distributor TuneCore, announce a partnership covering "music from participating Believe and TuneCore artists and labels." It is opt-in, and it reverses Believe's April policy of refusing to distribute AI songs made on "pirate platforms."
The v6 models start rolling out. "From the day it launches on September 9, this partnership starts generating revenue for our partners," Brody said.
Reactions
Suno founder and CEO Mikey Shulman called the models "faster, more expressive and higher quality" and framed the label deals as a template: "We believe this is a blueprint for how AI and the music industry can strengthen one another and build entirely new product experiences for artists, fans, and the broader music community."
Brody pitched the effort as expanding the business for everyone: "It's really kind of making good on this long-term effort to not only grow the pie for the industry, but to grow the pie in a way that benefits everyone." He also conceded Suno has not won over artists: "I don't think any one moment is going to change the mind of somebody who is a skeptic."
Believe founder and CEO Denis Ladegaillerie said the deal "gives them a meaningful choice over how they can participate, protect their rights and enables them to share the value created by innovative responsible AI technologies."
The skepticism has not gone away. The Hollywood Reporter notes consumers remain resistant to AI content and the industry has warned about AI slop flooding streaming services. Universal Music Group and Sony Music are still suing Suno, as is Round Hill Music, and singer-songwriter Jason Isbell has filed a class action against the company.
What's Next
Suno's second product is a remixing tool that would let artists opt into having fans remix songs from their catalogs — still in development, with Brody describing ongoing talks about safeguards for what he called the "consented version of derivative music experiences." Suno says licensed remixes could become a new revenue stream for participating artists.
The lawsuits from Universal, Sony, Round Hill and Isbell remain pending. Whether revenue-sharing deals with Warner, BMG and Believe are enough to legitimize the company in the eyes of working musicians is the open question.
More
Brody declined to detail how the new models work, saying only that "the v6 family has been trained from the ground up with a new set of data that differs from the data that went into our previous models," including licensed data from partners and user data.
That distinction matters because of what came before: Engadget reports a 2026 leak found Suno had scraped decades' worth of music and podcasts from YouTube, Deezer and other platforms to train its earlier models — the models the company is now retiring.
Poll
Should AI companies be allowed to train on music if the labels get paid?
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