UMG Recordings v. Suno (2026 — the v6 models)

UMG Recordings, Inc. v. Suno, Inc., No. 1:26-cv-14275, is a copyright infringement action filed September 18, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts by UMG Recordings, Sony Music Entertainment and ten affiliated imprints against Suno. It is distinct from the 2024 case of the same caption (UMG Recordings v. Suno (AI music training data), No. 1:24-cv-11611), which remains pending before the same judge. The new complaint asserts 60,202 sound recordings and targets Suno's "v6" model family — the models Suno launched in partnership with Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe and described as trained on licensed content (Source: courtlistener.com; variety.com).

Infobox

The output-laundering theory

The complaint's central allegation is that training a successor model on the outputs of an infringing predecessor does not cure the infringement. Suno announced with the v6 launch that its earlier models, trained on unlicensed data, would no longer be supported; the labels allege that because the v6 family was trained in part on user outputs derived from those models, and because Suno retains and continues to use unauthorized copies of the recordings, the taint carries forward. The pleading states that "training a new model on the outputs of an infringing model does not eliminate the infringement; it launders it," and that "v6 is not a fresh start; it is the fruit of the same poisoned tree." It pleads three routes of carry-forward rather than one: retained unauthorized copies of the recordings, which the complaint alleges Suno "continues to use to develop, evaluate, fine-tune, and improve its products, including v6"; training on user outputs and the paired-preference data derived from them, which the complaint argues "cannot be divorced from the outputs themselves," quoting CEO Michael Shulman that Suno "give[s] users two songs and they will implicitly tell [Suno] one of those is better than the other" and then "take[s] that signal and learn[s] from it"; and knowledge distillation and related model-transfer techniques, in which "the 'teachers' are Suno's prior models, and the capabilities they transmit — how to compose, arrange, and render convincing imitations of human-created music across genres and styles — were derived from the unlicensed recordings on which those models trained." It characterizes v6 as "a product of those tainted models and of the unauthorized copies of Plaintiffs' recordings that Suno retains and continues to use," concluding that "every model Suno has ever released—from its earliest versions through v6—is the product of, and continues to exploit, Suno's unauthorized copying of the Copyrighted Recordings" (Source: variety.com).

A second allegation runs to fair use rather than to the models. The labels argue that the licensing deals Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe signed with Suno are themselves an admission that a market exists for licensing recordings for AI training — bearing on the fourth statutory fair-use factor — even as Suno maintains in the 2024 case that its original training was fair use (Source: variety.com). The pleading disputes Chief Product Officer Jack Brody's characterization of the partners' revenue share as "not in exchange for training" and the deals as "not really about the data," arguing that "Suno takes its partners' recordings as training inputs and pays the rightsholders who supply them. That is a functioning licensing market, whatever nomenclature Suno adopts for litigation purposes." On market effect it cites Deezer's report of July 21, 2026 that AI-generated tracks exceeded half of all daily new music deliveries to that platform for the first time, at roughly 90,000 machine-made tracks a day, and a November 2025 Billboard report that Suno told investors its users generate "a Spotify catalog's worth of outputs every two weeks" (UMG Recordings v. Suno — complaint on the v6 models (D. Mass., 2026)). On the harm alleged, the complaint says Suno's conduct "threatens the entire music ecosystem and the numerous people it employs," "degrades the rights of artists to control their works," and "propagates the destructive theory that copyrighted music is free for the taking whenever a new technology claims that seeking and obtaining permission is just too cumbersome." The labels seek a declaration of infringement, statutory damages, and attorneys' fees.

The 60,202 recordings are asserted in an Exhibit A list of asserted works filed with the complaint, and the labels describe them as "only a small portion" of the works they say were infringed. The figure sits alongside the 61,026 works UMG and Sony have moved to add to the 2024 case, and Variety's account attributes the 60,202 to recordings the labels allege Suno infringed since its debut rather than to the v6 family alone (Source: variety.com).

Claims and relief

The complaint pleads three counts: direct infringement of post-1972 sound recordings under 17 U.S.C. § 106(1); direct infringement of pre-1972 recordings under §§ 106(1) and 1401(a)(1), relying on the Music Modernization Act's rule that an indexed pre-1972 recording carries statutory damages and fees under §§ 504 and 505; and circumvention of technological measures under § 1201(a), on the allegation that Suno obtained recordings by "stream ripping" them from YouTube, employing "code to access, extract, copy, and download" audio past the measures YouTube uses to prevent copying. Relief sought includes a declaration of willful infringement; preliminary and permanent injunctive relief reaching Suno's officers, agents, employees, successors, assigns and licensees; statutory damages up to $150,000 per work under § 504(c) or, at the plaintiffs' election, actual damages and profits under § 504(b); statutory damages up to $2,500 per act of circumvention under § 1203(c)(3)(A) or actual damages and profits under § 1203(c)(2); costs and fees under §§ 505 and 1203(b)(4)–(5); and pre- and post-judgment interest (UMG Recordings v. Suno — complaint on the v6 models (D. Mass., 2026)).

Origin in the 2024 case

The second action exists because the first court declined to expand. The plaintiffs moved in the 2024 case for leave to assert more than 61,000 additional works identified through forensic analysis of Suno's training corpus; Suno opposed; and on August 18, 2026 the court denied the motion without prejudice, on what the complaint describes as "the primary basis that the amendment would impact the existing case schedule." The complaint quotes the court's accompanying statement — "Plaintiffs are of course entitled to pursue valid claims for copyright infringement, and the magnitude of the alleged infringement is not a defense" — and says the court concluded that "proceeding in parallel cases best balances Plaintiffs' interests in enforcing their rights with judicial economy," which is the route the filing takes (UMG Recordings v. Suno — complaint on the v6 models (D. Mass., 2026)).

Suno's response

A Suno spokesperson called the claims "fundamentally flawed on both the facts and the law" and described the platform as drawing on "musical qualities" when a user names an artist "not so that a user can imitate someone else's work, but so that people learn the language of music and make something of their own." On v6 specifically: "We have doubled down on this goal, launching v6 in partnership with WMG, BMG, and Believe. v6 was trained on content licensed from our partners, interactions including creations and preference signals from our community, and the accumulated learnings from our team" (Source: variety.com). The phrase "interactions including creations and preference signals from our community" is the licensed-training account of the same user-output material the complaint treats as the carrier of the earlier infringement.

Procedural posture

The complaint was filed September 18, 2026 with a $405 filing fee, and attached an Exhibit A list of asserted works, a civil cover sheet, a local category form, and a certificate of relatedness. A corporate disclosure statement and a report on the filing of a copyright case were filed the same day, the latter mailed to the Register of Copyrights. The case was assigned to District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV, with Magistrate Judge Paul G. Levenson designated should the court refer any matter — the same pairing as the 2024 case, consistent with the certificate of relatedness. Summonses issued to Suno and to John Does 1–10 on September 18 (Source: courtlistener.com).

Position among the Suno actions

The filing brings to at least five the actions the vault tracks against Suno alongside the 2024 label case: Isbell v. Suno (right of publicity), the putative class action over artist identity; GEMA v. Suno (Munich Regional Court) in Germany; Round Hill Music v. Suno, one of two actions the independent publisher Round Hill Music filed on August 17, 2026 in the Northern District of California — the other against Anthropic (Round Hill Music v. Anthropic) — in which Round Hill states that damages would run to "hundreds of millions of dollars and may ultimately approach or exceed $1 billion" (Source: variety.com; courtlistener.com); and Beckham v. Suno, No. 1:26-cv-14065 (D. Mass., filed September 3, 2026), a diversity personal-injury action before Judge Allison D. Burroughs (Source: courtlistener.com). It also follows the pattern of Sony Music v. Udio (second suit, 2026), in which Sony filed a standalone second suit against Udio after the court declined to let it expand the original case, and is filed two days after UMG's action against the distributor DistroKid (UMG Recordings v. DistroKid).

Open questions

• Whether the court consolidates this case with the 2024 action or holds it separate, given the certificate of relatedness and the pending motions to amend in the earlier case.
• Whether the output-laundering theory is tested on the pleadings — no reported decision addresses whether training on the outputs of an infringing model is itself infringement of the underlying works.
• How the fair-use argument in the 2024 case interacts with the licensing deals the new complaint cites as evidence of a market, since both cases sit before the same judge.
• What Exhibit A's 60,202 recordings overlap with the 61,026 works sought in the 2024 amendment, and whether the two figures describe the same corpus.

Relationships

• depends-on: UMG Recordings v. Suno — complaint on the v6 models (D. Mass., 2026) — the operative pleading.

• related: UMG Recordings v. Suno (AI music training data) — the 2024 case of the same caption and court, still pending before the same judge; this action is filed as related to it.
• related: Sony Music v. Udio (second suit, 2026) — the standalone-second-suit pattern this filing follows.
• related: UMG Recordings v. DistroKid — UMG's action two days earlier against the distributor, on AI-generated tracks in distribution.
• related: Isbell v. Suno (right of publicity) — the putative class action over artist identity in Suno outputs.
• related: GEMA v. Suno (Munich Regional Court) — the German collecting society's parallel action.
• defendant: Suno — the defendant; the v6 launch and the WMG, BMG and Believe licensing deals are the subject.
• instance-of: AI Copyright — training-data infringement litigation.
• depends-on: Synthetic Data / Model-Generated Training Data — the complaint's theory turns on training a successor model on outputs of a predecessor.
• related: Training Data Walls — the licensing deals the complaint reads as evidence of a training-license market.
• litigates: Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) — the trade body that coordinated the 2024 label actions against Suno and Udio.