AI debate
The music industry is currently playing catch-up with the legality of AI and how AI music adversely affects human artists, musicians and the music indutry as a whole. For many musicians, the saturation of AI music being distributed can greatly diminish the likelihood of non-AI artists being seen and recognised.
The issue many have with AI Music tools such as Udio and Suno is that their AI models have been trained with real music but no royalties or compensation is made to musicians who's music has been used for the AI training purposes. A recent out of court settlement was reached between Universal Music Group (UMG) and Udio over a lawsuit that accused UDIO of copyright Infringement.
As a user of Udio who had an agreement for producing music on their platform, it was a complete shock when suddenly the Udio platform prevented downloads of the music we had created. The terms of service suddenly and abrubptly changed for paid subscribers such as myself. The issue for me is that credits I had previously purchased under the original agreement that had not been used resulted in songs not being able to be downloaded ever. Any songs that were produced before the agreement could not be downloaded either with the exception of a 'download window' that Udio provided in early November. However, any songs you created after the settlement could not be downloaded.
Suno also signed a deal with Warner Music that will also greatly affect Suno users in December 2025. Unlike the dramatic stance Udio have taken with it's customers, Suno will still allow downloads of songs generated, albeit in limited capacity and possibly with higher costs.
Changing Landscape
Without diving into too much of the legality side, the music industry along with AI collaborators are entering agreements to collaborate and find a balanced approach to the use of AI in music creation and distribution. For AI music creators such as myself, it will be interesting to see how this evolves. For the moment, please enjoy the music.
