UMG Recordings, Inc. v. Suno, Inc. is a copyright infringement lawsuit filed June 24, 2024 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts (No. 1:24-cv-11611) by major record labels, coordinated through the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), against Suno, the AI music-generation company. The original complaint asserted 560 copyrighted sound recordings; after discovery revealed that Suno's training data contained what the plaintiffs describe as "millions" of their recordings, UMG and Sony moved in May 2026 to expand the case to 61,026 works (Source: musicbusinessworldwide.com). The case was filed alongside a parallel suit against rival AI music generator Udio in the Southern District of New York (Source: musicbusinessworldwide.com).
Infobox
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Plaintiffs | UMG Recordings and affiliated Universal labels; Sony Music Entertainment and affiliated labels; Warner Music Group labels (dismissed January 2026) |
| Defendant | Suno, Inc. |
| Court | U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, No. 1:24-cv-11611 |
| Judge | F. Dennis Saylor IV (District Judge); Paul G. Levenson (Magistrate Judge, discovery) |
| Filed | June 24, 2024 |
| Nature of suit | 820 Copyright |
| Status | Active (last checked July 16, 2026) |
Background
Suno develops an AI music generator that produces songs from text prompts. The labels' June 2024 complaint alleged that Suno trained its models on copyrighted sound recordings without authorization. In its answer, Suno admitted that "the tens of millions of recordings that Suno's model was trained on presumably included recordings whose rights are owned by the Plaintiffs in this case," while asserting a fair use defense, and it declined to identify the specific recordings used in training outside the discovery process (Source: musicbusinessworldwide.com).
Warner Music Group, originally a co-plaintiff, settled its claims against Suno in November 2025 and struck a licensing agreement with the company; the Warner entities were voluntarily dismissed from the case in January 2026 (Source: musicbusinessworldwide.com). UMG and Sony remain active plaintiffs, and Music Business Worldwide reported that their own licensing negotiations with Suno have stalled (Source: musicbusinessworldwide.com).
Claims
The original complaint (Complaint, UMG Recordings et al. v. Suno, Inc. (D. Mass., June 24, 2024)) pleads two counts of direct reproduction under 17 U.S.C. § 106(1), the second reaching pre-1972 recordings through 17 U.S.C. § 1401(a)(1), and seeks statutory damages "in an amount up to $150,000 per work infringed."
Its distinctive feature is that it establishes copying from output evidence rather than from disclosure. Targeted prompts naming subject matter, genre, instruments, and vocal style produced outputs matching specific recordings — 29 outputs in the style of Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode," one of which "replicates the highly distinctive rhythm of the original's chorus, and uses the same melodic shape on the phrases 'go Johnny, go, go'" — supported by transposed side-by-side transcriptions colour-coding matching pitch and rhythm. The strongest evidence is producer tags, which carry no expressive function: an output titled "Rains of Castamere" opens with the "CashMoneyAP" tag though no prompt referenced the producer, and an output reproduces Jason Derulo's spoken-name tag. The complaint also records Suno's pre-litigation position, in which it declined to deny the allegations, called its training data "confidential business information," and asserted fair use — which the plaintiffs read as conceding the structure of the claim, since fair use "only arises as a defense to an otherwise unauthorized use" (Complaint, UMG Recordings et al. v. Suno, Inc. (D. Mass., June 24, 2024)). A proposed amended complaint filed in September 2025 — a motion that remains pending — added allegations that Suno obtained recordings by "stream-ripping" them from YouTube in violation of the anti-circumvention provision of 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a) (Source: musicbusinessworldwide.com). In July 2026, hacked Suno source code made public appeared to corroborate the scraping allegations, showing collection from YouTube Music (113,879 hours; over 2 million clips), Deezer, Genius, and other services (Source: 404media.co).
On May 21, 2026, UMG and Sony moved for leave to file a second amended complaint asserting 61,026 works, identified by running Audible Magic audio fingerprinting against Suno's training data in discovery. The plaintiffs state they are asserting "only a small fraction" of the recordings found and have proposed that Suno's fair use defense be resolved on summary judgment before ownership-related discovery for the added works completes. Suno opposes the motion, arguing the amendment "would effectively start the case over" and that it is "entitled to an expeditious resolution of its fair use defense" (Source: musicbusinessworldwide.com). Coverage of Suno's opposition noted that the expansion would raise potential statutory damages past $9 billion, that a judge had earlier denied Sony's parallel move to expand its Udio case, and that a summary-judgment hearing was expected in July 2026 (Source: musicbusinessworldwide.com).
Procedural history
Discovery over Suno's training data ran through a protracted dispute about audio fingerprinting. Suno initially agreed in June 2025 to permit the first stage of the plaintiffs' Audible Magic analysis, rescinded consent on July 8, 2025 over disputes about the second stage, and the parties appeared before Magistrate Judge Paul Levenson on July 31, 2025; an agreement was reached in October 2025. Fingerprinting of the training data began November 3, 2025, the Audible Magic analysis completed January 2, 2026, and final match results were delivered to the plaintiffs on January 15, 2026 (Source: musicbusinessworldwide.com).
A separate discovery dispute concerned the Warner settlement: UMG and Sony sought documents about Suno's business plans following the Warner licensing agreement, which Magistrate Judge Levenson denied on April 6, 2026, ruling that "settlements of litigation have little persuasive bearing on identifying and characterizing markets for intellectual property." The plaintiffs objected on April 20, 2026; Suno responded on May 4, 2026; and on July 13, 2026 Judge Saylor overruled the objection, finding the magistrate's ruling neither clearly erroneous nor contrary to law (Source: musicbusinessworldwide.com; courtlistener.com).
A status conference on outstanding discovery disputes was held before Magistrate Judge Levenson on July 9, 2026, with a scheduling order to issue after conferral with the district court session (Source: courtlistener.com). Under the scheduling order entered in March 2026, dispositive motions are due January 8, 2027, a deadline that may be revised if the motion to amend is granted (Source: musicbusinessworldwide.com).
Current status
The case is active. As of July 16, 2026, the September 2025 and May 2026 motions for leave to amend remain pending, discovery disputes continue before the magistrate judge, and dispositive motions are due January 8, 2027. Suno has continued raising capital during the litigation, closing a $400 million Series D at a $5.4 billion valuation in June 2026 (Source: techcrunch.com).
Related proceedings
In the parallel Udio case, Sony Music filed a motion on May 22, 2026 seeking to add 30,442 works identified through the same discovery-driven fingerprinting approach (Source: musicbusinessworldwide.com). After the judge denied that expansion, Sony filed a standalone second suit against Udio on July 21, 2026 asserting 30,117 of the barred recordings; see Sony Music v. Udio (second suit, 2026) (Source: musicbusinessworldwide.com). The American Federation of Musicians sued UMG and Warner Music Group in the Southern District of New York in June 2026, alleging that musicians have not been compensated from the labels' settlements with Suno and Udio (Source: hollywoodreporter.com). Court records also show other pending suits against Suno, including Justice v. Suno (D. Mass., filed June 14, 2025, copyright), Poseidon Wave Media LLC v. Suno (S.D.N.Y., filed May 12, 2026), S.A. Jamendo v. Suno (D. Mass., filed June 29, 2026), and Woulard v. Suno (N.D. Ill., filed October 16, 2025) (Source: courtlistener.com).
The case is the principal US test of AI music generation under copyright law, coordinated by the RIAA alongside a parallel action against Udio.
Relationships
- litigates: Suno — defendant
- related: AI Copyright Litigation — Analysis — comparative tracking of AI copyright suits
- related: AI Copyright — concept-level frame
- related: Hachette et al. v. Google (Gemini training data), NYT v. Microsoft, OpenAI et al. — parallel training-data copyright suits in other media