{"id":492418,"date":"2026-02-26T22:23:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T22:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/492418\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T22:23:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T22:23:14","slug":"ai-startups-suno-and-udio-angered-the-music-industry-now-they-hope-to-join-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/492418\/","title":{"rendered":"AI startups Suno and Udio angered the music industry. Now they hope to join it"},"content":{"rendered":"

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) \u2014 Suno CEO Mikey Shulman pulls up a chair to the recording studio desk where a research scientist at his artificial intelligence company is creating a new song.<\/p>\n

The flute line sounds promising.<\/p>\n

The percussion needs work.<\/p>\n

Neither of them is playing an instrument. They type some descriptive words \u2013 Afrobeat, flute, drums, 90 beats per minute \u2013 and out comes an infectious rhythm that livens up the 19th century office building where Suno is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They toggle some editing tools to refine the new track.<\/p>\n

Much like early experiences with ChatGPT or AI text-to-image generators, trying to make an AI-generated song on platforms like Suno or its rival, Udio, can seem a little like magic. It takes no musical skills, practice or emotional wellspring to conjure up a new tune inspired by almost any of the world\u2019s musical traditions.<\/p>\n

But the process of training AI on beloved musicians of the past and present to produce synthetic approximations of their work has angered the music industry and brought much of its legal power<\/a> against the two startups.<\/p>\n

Now, after their users have flooded the internet<\/a> with millions of AI-generated songs, some of which have found themselves on streaming services like Spotify, the leaders of Suno and New York-based Udio are trying to negotiate with record labels to secure a foothold in an industry that shunned them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have always thought that working together with the music industry instead of against the music industry is the only way that this works,\u201d said Shulman, who co-founded Suno in 2022. \u201cMusic is so culturally important that it doesn\u2019t make sense to have an AI world and a non-AI world of music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Records sued the two startups for copyright infringement in 2024, alleging that they were exploiting the recorded works of their artists.<\/p>\n

Since then, the pair have strived to make peace with the industry. Suno, now valued at $2.45 billion, last year struck a settlement with Warner, and Udio has signed licensing agreements with Warner, Universal<\/a> and independent label Merlin. Only one major label, Sony, has not settled with either startup as the lawsuits move forward in Boston and New York federal courts. Suno also faces legal challenges in Europe brought by groups representing music creators.<\/p>\n

The first of the settlement deals, between Udio and Universal, led to an exodus of frustrated Udio users<\/a> who were blocked from downloading<\/a> their own AI-generated tracks. But Udio CEO Andrew Sanchez said he\u2019s optimistic about what the future will bring as his company adapts its business model to let fans of willing artists use AI to play with and potentially alter their works.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Udio<\/p>\n

Udio CEO Andrew Sanchez is photographed in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo\/Richard Drew)<\/p>\n

Udio CEO Andrew Sanchez is photographed in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo\/Richard Drew)<\/p>\n

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\u201cHaving a close relationship with the music industry is elemental to us,\u201d Sanchez said in an interview. \u201cUsers really want to have an anchor to their favorite artists. They want to have an anchor to their favorite songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many professional musicians are skeptical. Singer-songwriter Tift Merritt, co-chair of the Artists Rights Alliance, recently helped organize a \u201cStealing Isn\u2019t Innovation\u201d campaign by artists \u2014 including Cyndi Lauper and Bonnie Raitt \u2014 to urge AI companies to pursue licensing deals and partnerships rather than build platforms without regard for copyright law.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe economy of AI music is built totally on the intellectual property, globally, of musicians everywhere without transparency, consent, or payment. So, I know they value their intellectual property, but ours has been consumed in order to replace us,\u201d Merritt said in an interview in Raleigh, North Carolina. <\/p>\n

Shulman contends technology \u201cevolves very often faster than the law,\u201d and his company tries to be thoughtful about \u201cnot breaking the law\u201d but also \u201cdeliver products that the world really wants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suno CEO doesn\u2019t really think \u2018people don\u2019t enjoy\u2019 making music<\/p>\n

When the music industry first confronted Suno over alleged copyright infringement, the company\u2019s antagonistic response alienated professionals like Merritt.<\/p>\n

Symbolizing the divide was a clip last year in which Shulman was quoted as saying, \u201cit\u2019s not really enjoyable\u201d to make music most of the time. Shulman started learning piano at age 4 but later dropped it. He took up bass guitar at 12, playing in rock bands in high school and college. He said that experience gave him some of the best moments of his life.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Mikey<\/p>\n

Mikey Shulman, one of the founders of AI music generator startup Suno, speaks to a reporter at company headquarters, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo\/Robert F. Bukaty)<\/p>\n

Mikey Shulman, one of the founders of AI music generator startup Suno, speaks to a reporter at company headquarters, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo\/Robert F. Bukaty)<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software,\u201d Shulman said on the \u201cThe Twenty Minute VC\u201d podcast. \u201cI think the majority of people don\u2019t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cClearly, I wish I had said different words,\u201d Shulman told the AP. The context, he added, was that \u201cto produce perfect music takes a lot of repetitions and not all of those minutes are the most enjoyable bits of making music. On the whole, obviously, music is amazing. I play music every day for fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Udio CEO pitches his company as the friendly alternative<\/p>\n

Sanchez, the Udio CEO, also loves making music. He\u2019s an opera-loving tenor who\u2019s sung in choirs and grew up crooning Luciano Pavarotti in his family\u2019s home in Buffalo, New York. <\/p>\n

Founded in 2023 by a group that included several AI researchers from Google, the startup now employs about 25 people. It has fewer users and raised less venture capital than Suno, which likely gave Udio a stronger incentive to be first to settle with record labels, said copyright lawyer Brandon Butler.<\/p>\n

\u201cA service (like Suno) that gets more venture backing is in some sense hungrier to find revenue streams and more on the hook to all those backers to make sure that they achieve profitability, which would make settling and compromising less attractive,\u201d said Butler, director of the copyright advocacy group Re:Create. \u201cWhereas a company with fewer backers, with less capital, with less access would be weaker and less able to resist the risk that they\u2019re incurring by being involved in litigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Udio embraces its underdog status.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo many tech companies actively cultivate this I-am-a-tech-company-crusader and that\u2019s part of their identity,\u201d Sanchez said. \u201cThat alienates people who are creative and I am uniformly opposed to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sanchez said he knows not every artist is going to embrace AI, but he hopes those who leave the room after talking with him realize he\u2019s not imposing a kind of \u201cAI bravado.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you took what we\u2019re doing and pretended that the word AI wasn\u2019t a part of it, people would be like, \u2018Oh my gosh. This is so cool.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Some see potential in AI-assisted music creation<\/p>\n

In the basement office of his Philadelphia, Mississippi home, Christopher \u201cTopher\u201d Townsend is a one-man band, making and marketing Billboard-chart-topping gospel music \u2014 none of which he sings himself \u2014 and doing it in record time.<\/p>\n

The rapper, whose lyrics reflect his political conservatism, downloaded Suno in October and, within days, created Solomon Ray, a fictional singer that Townsend calls an extension of himself.<\/p>\n

Townsend uses ChatGPT to write lyrics, Suno to generate songs and other AI tools to create cover art and promotional videos under the Solomon Ray name.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can see why artists would be afraid,\u201d Townsend said. \u201d(Solomon Ray) has an immaculate voice. He doesn\u2019t get sick. You know, he doesn\u2019t have to take leave, he doesn\u2019t get injured and he can work faster than I can work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trying to dispel that fear for aspiring artists is Jonathan Wyner, a professor of music production and engineering at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, who sees generative AI as just another tool.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo the creative musician, AI represents both enormous potential benefits in terms of streamlining things and frankly making kinds of music-making possible that weren\u2019t possible before, and making it more accessible to people who want to make music,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Such a vision remains a tough sell for artists who feel their work has already been exploited. Merritt says she\u2019s particularly concerned about labels making deals with AI companies that leave out independent artists. An open letter she co-signed this week says \u201cmany in our community are embracing responsible AI as a tool for creation\u201d but targets Suno as a \u201csmash and grab\u201d business that artists should avoid.<\/p>\n

\u201cArtists need to know the difference \u2013 all AI platforms are not the same, and Suno, which is being sued for copyright infringement, is not a platform artists should trust,\u201d says the letter from Merritt and six others. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Singer<\/p>\n

Singer and songwriter Tift Merritt, co-chair of the Artist Rights Alliance, poses for a photo with her guitars at her home in Raleigh, N.C., Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026. (AP Photo\/Allen G. Breed)<\/p>\n

Singer and songwriter Tift Merritt, co-chair of the Artist Rights Alliance, poses for a photo with her guitars at her home in Raleigh, N.C., Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026. (AP Photo\/Allen G. Breed)<\/p>\n

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\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014-<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien reported from Cambridge, Massachusetts and New York. Ngowi reported from Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts. AP journalists Sophie Bates in Philadelphia, Mississippi and Allen G. Breed in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) \u2014 Suno CEO Mikey Shulman pulls up a chair to the recording studio desk where…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,4613,225655,181,507,225658,8731,225654,28,2356,6357,88,1076,793,851,11382,25186,845,3130,149,225656,2001,225657,216,3508,2005,2256,225653,11622,74,225652,795,965],"class_list":{"0":"post-492418","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-alphabet","10":"tag-andrew-sanchez","11":"tag-artificial-intelligence","12":"tag-artificialintelligence","13":"tag-bonnie-raitt","14":"tag-boston","15":"tag-brandon-butler","16":"tag-business","17":"tag-california","18":"tag-cyndi-lauper","19":"tag-entertainment","20":"tag-europe","21":"tag-general-news","22":"tag-inc","23":"tag-information-technology","24":"tag-intellectual-property","25":"tag-jwd-evergreen","26":"tag-lawsuits","27":"tag-lifestyle","28":"tag-luciano-pavarotti","29":"tag-massachusetts","30":"tag-mikey-shulman","31":"tag-music","32":"tag-nc-state-wire","33":"tag-new-york","34":"tag-north-carolina","35":"tag-solomon-ray","36":"tag-spotify-technology-sa","37":"tag-technology","38":"tag-tift-merritt","39":"tag-u-s-news","40":"tag-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}