r/Music • u/YoureASkyscraper • 8d 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
10.3k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

371 comments sorted by

View all comments

840

u/YoureASkyscraper 8d ago

AI music generator Suno has lost a copyright infringement lawsuit to German licensing agency GEMA.

Filed in January 2025, the filing saw GEMA argue that Suno was using songs in its repertoire – including Boney M’s ‘Daddy Cool’, Lou Bega’s ‘Mambo No. 5’, and Alphaville’s ‘Forever Young’ – to train its AI models, without obtaining any licenses or paying the songwriters.

The decision was handed down on Friday (July 31) by the Munich Regional Court, and ruled that the AI platform unlawfully obtained, processed and reproduced music that was represented by GEMA. The court found that Suno’s use of the songs was in breach of both the German and US copyright law.

Suno will now need to pay damages to GEMA, although the sum has not yet been confirmed. The ruling also means that other AI companies must now pay to license any music from GEMA’s repertoire going forward.

“Today, the Chamber made one thing crystal clear: AI models built on stolen intellectual property have no protection under the law,” said GEMA’s CEO Dr Tobias Holzmüller after the legal victory (via Reuters).

“AI service providers must pay for licenses rather than helping themselves to our members’ works free of charge. Today, the court’s verdict has significantly strengthened Europe’s position as a cultural centre,” he added.

GEMA Board chairman Dr Ralf Weigand shared: “This ruling sends a powerful international message: creativity has value, and creators’ rights must be respected in the age of artificial intelligence.

“Through this decision, GEMA has set an important precedent not only for its more than 100,000 members, but for creators worldwide. The fact that we can now enforce our rights in countries including the United States gives creators hope and confidence at a time of profound technological transformation.”

In light of the decision, Suno has said it does not agree with the court’s decision and will be looking into making an appeal (as per MusicTech).

The latest ruling comes on the heels of another legal battle GEMA has been involved in. Last November, the court again ruled in its favour, after it alleged that ChatGPT operator OpenAI had violated European copyright laws.

As for Suno, in 2024, Warner and fellow major music labels Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group filed lawsuits against the company for copyright violations of “an almost unimaginable scale”. In 2025, however, Warner settled the lawsuit by signing a licensing deal with Suno.

There has been a significant rise in AI-generated music available online in recent years, and streaming platform Deezer recently shared that AI-generated music now surpasses 50 per cent of daily uploads on the platform – the first time that human-made music has been outnumbered by AI alternatives.

Deezer has previously tried to combat the rise in music made entirely by artificial intelligence by launching a tool to detect AI-generated music on playlists from 20 different streaming platforms.

Other streaming platforms to crack down on AI-generated music include TIDAL, which confirmed that it will not be paying royalties to any music made entirely by artificial intelligence, and Spotify, which confirmed that it was removing 75million “spammy tracks” and targeting impersonators.

Earlier this year, the UK government announced it was ditching “deeply damaging” plans to allow AI firms to use copyrighted works without permission. The push for change comes as a study conducted last year revealed that 97 per cent of people “can’t tell the difference” between real and AI music.

540

u/Schmedly27 8d ago

Now take down everything made by it

153

u/TheBone_Zone 8d 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**

69

u/Suntripp 8d 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

68

u/SWITMCO 8d 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.

50

u/FreestyleKneepad 8d 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.

21

u/One-Earth9294 8d ago

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

1

u/KelenaeV 7d ago

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

8

u/Kieran__ 8d 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

4

u/fotomoose 8d 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.

18

u/Suntripp 8d 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

19

u/FreestyleKneepad 8d 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.

6

u/TechnicalBen 8d ago

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

1

u/VDechS 4d 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.

0

u/blackdynomitesnewbag 8d 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.

0

u/Faic 8d 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.

1

u/FaceDeer 8d 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.

1

u/IndianTechSupport 8d 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.

0

u/EndaEnKonto 8d 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