Filed June 24, 2024 in the District of Massachusetts, No. 1:24-cv-11611, before Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV. Plaintiffs are UMG Recordings and Capitol Records ("Universal"); Sony Music Entertainment; and Atlantic Recording Corporation, Atlantic Records Group, Rhino Entertainment, The All Blacks U.S.A., Warner Music International Services Limited, and Warner Records ("Warner"). Defendants are Suno, Inc. and John Does 1–10. A 34-page complaint with Exhibits A (asserted recordings), B, and C (a thumb drive of the referenced Suno outputs). See UMG Recordings v. Suno (AI music training data), Suno.
The theory
The complaint's framing is market substitution by the outputs, not only unauthorized copying at training: "When those who develop such a service steal copyrighted sound recordings, the service's synthetic musical outputs could saturate the market with machine-generated content that will directly compete with, cheapen, and ultimately drown out the genuine sound recordings on which the service is built."
Its legal premise is stated as a general principle: "Foundational principles of copyright law dictate that copying protected sound recordings for the purpose of developing an AI product requires permission from rightsholders."
The plaintiffs position themselves as licensors rather than opponents of the technology, noting a "track record of embracing innovation" through "full-catalog licenses with streaming music services and user-generated content platforms, and other licenses with innovative businesses associated with social media, fitness, gaming, the metaverse, and more."
Proving copying from outputs
The complaint's methodological interest is that it must establish training-data contents without discovery, and it says so: Suno "has been deliberately evasive about what exactly it has copied," with executives speaking "in exceedingly general terms" — one co-founder describing training on a "mix of proprietary and public data," another saying Suno's practices are "fairly in line with what other people are doing." It quotes an early investor: "if [Suno] had deals with labels when this company got started, I probably wouldn't have invested in it. I think that they needed to make this product without the constraints."
The pre-litigation exchange supplies the first inference. When accused directly, "Suno did not deny or proffer any facts to undermine those allegations," instead asserting that its training data is "confidential business information." Suno also claimed its copying is "fair use," which the complaint reads as an admission of structure rather than fact: fair use "only arises as a defense to an otherwise unauthorized use of a copyrighted work."
Targeted prompting supplies the second. Plaintiffs generated outputs "using a series of prompts that pinpoint a particular sound recording by referencing specific subject matter, genre, artist, instruments, vocal style, and the like," and the service "repeatedly generated outputs that closely matched the targeted copyrighted sound recording." The inference drawn is that "this degree of similarity in output would be impossible if Suno were not training on the Copyrighted Recordings."
The worked example is Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode," where the service produced 29 outputs in its style. From the prompt "1950s rock and roll, rhythm & blues, 12 bar blues, rockabilly, energetic male vocalist, singer guitarist" plus the original lyrics, one output "replicates the highly distinctive rhythm of the original's chorus, and uses the same melodic shape on the phrases 'go Johnny, go, go.'" The complaint attaches transposed side-by-side musical transcriptions, colour-coding notes matching the original in both pitch and rhythm against those matching one but not the other.
Producer tags supply the third and most distinctive line of evidence — artefacts with no expressive function that could only come from the recordings. A Suno output titled "Rains of Castamere" "begins with the 'CashMoneyAP' producer tag, even though the prompt used to generate this digital music file in no way referenced this producer," a tag heard on recordings by Da Baby and Pop Smoke. Similarly, Jason Derulo's spoken-name tag "is repeated at the beginning of the Suno-generated digital music file aptly titled 'Jason Derulo,' in a manner exceedingly similar to how Jason Derulo tags his recordings."
The complaint also quotes co-founder Mikey Shulman as having "admitted that Suno already has the ability to produce outputs that replicate real artists' vocals and genuine sound recordings, but Suno is holding back from allowing users to generate such replicas until 'the licensing . . . climate is a little less uncertain.'"
Fair use
The complaint addresses the defence pre-emptively on all four factors. On purpose and character, Suno's use "is quintessentially commercial and creates directly competitive digital music files that serve the same purpose as the recorded music Plaintiffs create." On the nature of the work, sound recordings "are at the core of copyright protection." On amount, Suno "copies the key expressive features." On market effect, the infringement "undermines both existing and potential commercial markets for selling, licensing, and distributing sound recordings."
Its transformativeness argument is framed as a category distinction rather than a degree question: fair use "promotes human expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyrighted works in certain, limited circumstances, but Suno offers imitative machine-generated music—not human creativity or expression."
Scale and commercial context
As of filing, Suno "already has over 10,000,000 users generating music files using its product, with some outputs amassing upwards of 2,000,000 streams," some of which have reached major streaming services. Suno's "latest funding round raised $125 million, valuing the company at approximately $500 million," with subscriptions "up to $24 per month for its highest subscription tier."
Causes of action
Two counts, both for direct reproduction under 17 U.S.C. § 106(1), pleaded as willful:
| Count | Claim |
|---|---|
| First | Direct copyright infringement of the registered Universal, Sony, and Warner Works |
| Second | Direct infringement of pre-1972 sound recordings under 17 U.S.C. §§ 106(1) and 1401(a)(1), all having been submitted to and publicly indexed by the Copyright Office under § 1401 |
The separate pre-1972 count is what brings recordings predating federal sound-recording copyright — the Chuck Berry era the complaint's lead example draws on — within the same action, via the Music Modernization Act's § 1401 regime.
Relief sought: a declaration of willful infringement; preliminary and permanent injunctions reaching Suno and "all others in active concert or participation"; and statutory damages under § 504(c) "in an amount up to $150,000 per work infringed," or actual damages and profits at plaintiffs' election, with costs and fees under § 505. Exhibit A is expressly "non-exhaustive," and plaintiffs stated an intention "to amend the Complaint at an appropriate time to provide an expanded list of works."
Relationships
- supports: UMG Recordings v. Suno (AI music training data) — the operative filing
- related: AI Copyright — establishes copying from output evidence rather than from disclosed training data
- supports: AI Music Generation — the output-evidence method for establishing training-set contents
- related: Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Suno, Media, Journalism & Entertainment — AI Deployment, Bartz v. Anthropic