The American Federation of Musicians (AFM) has filed a lawsuit alleging its members aren’t sharing in the upside of the major labels’ landmark licensing settlements with AI music companies Suno and Udio.
AFM, the union for session musicians, is suing Universal Music Group (UMG) and Warner Music Group (WMG) for breach of their collective bargaining agreement. The lawsuit, filed on Friday (June 5) and first obtained and reported by Billboard, focuses on copyright settlements that the two majors reached at the end of 2025 for popular music AI models to be trained on licensed works.
“The AFM brings this lawsuit because defendants, two of the largest music companies in the world, have licensed sound recordings on which AFM-represented musicians have worked, without compensation or credit, to two AI companies,” reads the complaint. “At the same time, they have refused to provide information to the AFM about which recordings and whose work is being licensed.”
UMG and WMG, alongside fellow major Sony, sued Suno and Udio in 2024, claiming both AI models had been illegally trained on millions of copyrighted recordings. UMG and WMG both settled with Udio in the fall, striking deals for the company to train a new model on licensed work that will remain within a “walled garden” on the platform. WMG later settled with Suno as well, agreeing to a licensed training model that allows for off-platform distribution. UMG is still suing Suno, and Sony has not settled with either company.
Now, Suno and Udio are both in the process of building new models based on licensed music. But AFM alleges in Friday’s lawsuit that they aren’t sharing in the proceeds of the major labels’ training licenses.
“While the defendants protected their own interests and created a significant source of new revenue with the retrospective settlements and prospective licenses, they have refused to compensate the musicians whose work — created with their own instruments and through their talent, creativity, and hard work – is fed into AI machines for profit,” reads the lawsuit.
AFM says this is a violation of its collective bargaining agreement, which requires the majors to compensate its members for “new uses” of their music. The union also says it’s entitled to know what specific recordings are being fed into Suno and Udio’s training sets, but that WMG and UMG have not provided this information.
In response to the lawsuit, a UMG spokesperson said, “Universal Music Group has been at the forefront of protecting the rights and advancing the interests of artists and songwriters in the age of AI — striking responsible AI licensing agreements to ensure they are compensated, leading the charge for legislation to further protect them and taking legal action against bad actors.”
“The AFM chose this route during our collective bargaining negotiations, and we will continue to work to resolve any issues through these negotiations, as we have in the past,” added the UMG spokesperson. “We expect to continue our strong working relationship with the AFM built on mutual respect for the talented musicians in our industry.”
WMG said in a statement, “Warner Music Group is growing the value of music by establishing guardrails and architecting a healthy AI ecosystem on the behalf of artists everywhere. We are disappointed by the AFM’s unproductive action amid our ongoing negotiations. We look forward to resuming our negotiations as scheduled.”
Reps for Suno and Udio did not immediately return requests for comment on the lawsuit.
The case points to a growing concern among artists and their advocates over how exactly the settlements with Suno and Udio will actually work. While UMG and WMG have vowed to secure “opt in” approval from musicians for use of their material in the new songs spit out by AI models (outputs), it remains murky whether artists will get approval or compensation for the inclusion of their catalogs in AI training datasets (inputs).
As reported by Billboard, some record label contracts have recently been updated to add explicit new approvals for the use of songs in AI training inputs. But top music lawyers say it’s possible the majors could rely on pre-existing blanket license clauses, which allow labels to license out their entire libraries to social media companies like Instagram and TikTok, to broadly authorize music for AI training without seeking individual artist approval.
Which music will be incorporated into the updated, licensed Suno and Udio models still remains unclear, as does the compensation structure for artists. Both models are still in development.
This story was updated on June 5 at 4:05 p.m. ET to add additional context. It was updated again at 5:53 p.m. ET to add a statement from UMG, and at 7:28 p.m. ET with a statement from WMG.
