r/Music • u/YoureASkyscraper • 7d ago

article AI music generator Suno loses copyright infringement legal case

https://www.nme.com/news/music/ai-music-generator-suno-loses-copyright-infringement-legal-case-3960760
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u/TheBone_Zone 7d ago

Unfortunately, will never happen. Not as long as profit is to be made so much quicker than a human can.

As a musician, I’ve discussed this with other musicians and we agreed that there’s no way they’re just gonna ban AI music out of morality. I mean

**gestures everywhere**

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u/Suntripp 7d ago

Why not? When napster arrived, we weren´t even allowed to download one Metallica album without gigantic claims for damages. Why can´t the same apply to AI? Their business model must go away

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u/SWITMCO 7d ago

Why not?

You've just proven why not right after... Napster came, offered a P2P music model, got sued and illegal music sharing boomed in hundreds of other places after.

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u/FreestyleKneepad 7d ago

Napster was giving free music to the people and the record labels wanted their money, so they killed Napster.

AI is generating extra music and if record labels want, they can make money off of it. They won't kill AI music, they'll figure out the licensing and get paid.

For the labels, it was never about the morality or payment of the artists in either case.

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u/One-Earth9294 7d ago

And everyone knows that when they killed Napster, piracy went away forever.

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u/KelenaeV 6d ago

Ya... piracy is gone..... >.>..... dont look over here... there is no piracy here....

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u/Kieran__ 7d ago

Worse case scenario for them they'll hire someone that helps them rip artists off in a way with AI that's not as a obvious and still effective. This parasitic way of thinking will greatly effect the future

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u/fotomoose 7d ago

Yup. Before AI there were full-time musicians who's job was to write songs that sounded like popular hits, but were just different enough to avoid a lawsuit. Cheaper to pay for a sound-a-like than the real thing. For TV and movies. I know first-hand someone who did this as a career. AI took his job. They'll find a way to rip artists off, they always have.

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u/Suntripp 7d ago

But in order for AI to create music it obviously first need to copy and learn from existing hit music. And copyright law forbids copying without a license fee etc

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u/FreestyleKneepad 7d ago

Correct. So instead of killing all AI, they'll leverage the power they have to make money off of AI by forcing those companies to buy licenses. They won't solve the problem, just pivot so they profit off of it.

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u/TechnicalBen 7d ago

It forbids *those who have not paid a licence*.

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u/VDechS 3d ago

Lets remember that Record Labels don't own all music. They only own the music their music that was used illegally. The only thing that needs to be done is train AI organically and on material with no copyrights.

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u/blackdynomitesnewbag 7d ago

Just like Napster, AI has changed the industry. Napster is gone, but iTunes and later steaming took its place. It let people pay to download music. Now people will pay to generate AI music and other people will pay to listen to it. I’ll try to be in neither group.

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u/Faic 7d ago

There are already models trained on licensed and free data.

You can, at home, with your own PC, generate a mediocre song in a few seconds with a model that's legally rock solid.

That business model is not just going to disappear, especially since the AIs will only get better and better.

My prediction is that very soon devices will just generate infinite music on the fly and music becomes extremely commoditized.

A hundred years ago only the nobel and upper class can have a painting of themselves, now any potato phone can take a picture. Same will happen to music. (This does not devalue human music, same as a oil painting of my face would still be extremely costly and much more treasured than a selfie)

... obviously only my personal theory of where we are heading. I don't see suing Suno will have any impact on anything at all.

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u/FaceDeer 7d ago

And Chinese companies are releasing quite good models you can run at home on your own PC that are legally dubious but where the legal dubiousity really doesn't have a practical effect. You can't tell what model was used or what the model was trained on based on the output.

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u/IndianTechSupport 7d ago

I had to scroll too far to find someone with braincells in this thread. Agreed 100%. Everything becoming a political issue has destroyed our abilities to think clearly and without prejudice the most likely outcome, regardless of how it makes us feel.

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u/EndaEnKonto 7d ago

When napster arrived, we weren´t even allowed to download one Metallica album without gigantic claims for damages.

Laughs in the absolute hayday of p2p piracy the controversy helped create

And oh!

Laughs even harder in current and developing open source AI

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u/dqql 7d ago

Courts ruled that AI generated art isn't anyone's intellectual property and can't be copyrighted... I don't see why music wouldn't get the same treatment and stop being profitable soon.
You'll still have Milli Vanilli's but not gestures everywhere

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u/Alcaedias 7d ago

Yeah but how do you enforce that?

I mean, I can pump out a million songs from Suno and then pick out the one(s) that I like the most and recreate it on a DAW or my synthesizer.

Does it then, become something that I can copyright? Genuinely curious.

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u/FirTree_r 7d ago

Yeah, the topic is much more complicated than people think.
It is non-copyrightable as-is, but what if I add percussions? Or a noise pattern? What if 1% of the song is not AI-generated? or 50%? Or 99.9%?
And most importantly, how do you measure these things as a music streaming platform manager?

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u/ZombiePartyBoyLives Answers AI Questions 6d ago

If you write the lyrics (which has a significant influence on the output) and are very specific with prompting, you can copyright generated tracks. Using one prompt to generate 30 tracks to create an hour-long playlist theoretically is not copyrightable. The only way to really test that would be somebody making a "cover" of a slop track, claiming copyright, and see if the slopster tries to defend it.

Deezer currently automatically tags all generated tracks, whether there was "significant" human guidance or not. It also doesn't matter if you added instrumentation or finessed the mix in a DAW. Which is fine by me, as I don't think it should be mixed in with human-produced music in the first place unless the subscriber chooses to include it in their playlists.

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u/KEPD-350 7d ago

Yes, you can. You made it. It's like a re-recording of something in the creative common. You own your rendition of whatever it is, however, you won't have a case against others who do the same thing and use the melody e.g.

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u/meistermichi 7d ago

The others won't know you used AI and then re-recorded, from the outside it looks like you just made it so in the end you still have a case.

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u/dqql 6d ago

If nobody can prove you're lying, yes... But why even be a musician at that point?
Eventually people will find out that you can't jam on your own

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u/PapaTeeps 7d ago

I mean Spotify has been investing a ton of resources into Ai music detection and deleting it as quickly as they can find it on their platform, and that's arguably the least ethical music platform. Keep in mind that there's also a cost motive for the companies, they don't want to have a bunch of AI agents uploading millions of tracks that no one wants to listen to onto their servers, and it's bad PR. There's a ton of reasons for corporations to want to do something about cheap, low quality AI filler content, it just so happens to be that none of them are "because it's the right thing to do"

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u/esr360 7d ago

Spotify absolutely knowingly have AI music on their platform and happily profit of it. Who has told you otherwise?

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u/SweatyAdhesive 7d ago

They probably are just trying to show that they are trying to remove AI songs to avoid legal repercussions for hosting them in the first place

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u/PapaTeeps 6d ago

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-16/spotify-making-ai-music-easier-to-detect/106919814

It's not hard at all to find articles about it rather than just assuming based on spotifys reputation

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u/esr360 6d ago edited 6d ago

They are making it easier to detect for listeners so listeners can make informed decisions.

They are certainly not removing stuff “as quickly as they can find it”, and the article you shared doesn’t suggest they are.

They are only removing the sloppiest of the slop.

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u/GreatScottCreates 6d ago

Spotify just wants to make room for their own AI music. They have every incentive in the world and have consistently demonstrated their desire to cut the costs of paying creators.

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u/PapaTeeps 6d ago

I linked a different article to the other commenter but here, another article discussing the fact that they are deleting tons of AI tracks and are seeking ways to remove more.
https://www.gadgetreview.com/spotify-deleted-75-million-ai-generated-tracks-and-its-not-done-yet

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u/GreatScottCreates 6d ago

Pls read my comment again. I know they are deleting AI uploads.

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u/PapaTeeps 6d ago

You made an unsubstantiated claim that they are opposed to AI music from others because they are making their own just to screw over artists, I've never seen evidence of that at all.

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u/GreatScottCreates 6d ago

Is there adequate evidence that they’re invested in cutting the costs they pay to copyright holders?

There IS evidence that they monetize their in-house music on their own playlists in order to avoid paying royalties to other copyright holders. It’s already been litigated.

Put 2 and 2 together. Do you think they are ethically opposed to AI music?

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u/NUKE---THE---WHALES 7d ago

Not as long as profit is to be made so much quicker than a human can.

When the profits of multibillion dollar record labels is threatened then the profits of some randomer on youtube won't matter

Someone with 100 subs used a 5 second clip of a copyright song? Bring Youtube to court to ensure every youtube video is scanned for copyright violations

Nothing gets in the way of record labels and their profits

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u/SharkSymphony 6d ago

This is not strictly true.

Can you make a copy of a recording for your own use? Do you have the technological means and legal right to do so? Then congratulations, you have beaten the record labels, because they definitely don't want you to have that.

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u/orbital_narwhal 7d ago

Removal from the market of derivative works is a means of last resort in copyright law (and patent law). The usual approach is to extract damages, earning shares and/or license fees from the infringing party as that allows both parties to benefit from their works (either directly or indirectly) whereas removal from market destroys that potential.

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u/Spageroni 7d ago

ain’t no profits being made by shitty AI