{"id":6561,"date":"2025-06-06T11:44:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T01:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bprworld.com\/?p=6561"},"modified":"2025-12-04T17:03:26","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T06:03:26","slug":"universal-warner-and-sony-are-negotiating-ai-licensing-rights-for-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/news\/universal-warner-and-sony-are-negotiating-ai-licensing-rights-for-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Universal, Warner and Sony Are Negotiating AI Licensing Rights for Music"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Key Points<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s This?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Major labels are negotiating AI music licensing deals with Suno and Udio, potentially setting precedents for AI-generated music compensation.<\/li>\n<li>Music companies want attribution technology to track song usage in AI, participation in AI product development and artist opt-out options.<\/li>\n<li>Labels aim to protect artists\u2019 work, generate revenue, and settle copyright lawsuits amid regulatory uncertainty and investor pressure.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Major music companies are negotiating licensing deals with two startups that could set a new precedent for how songs are used and artists are paid for remixes generated by artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/market-data\/quotes\/NL\/XAMS\/UMG\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Universal Music Group<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/market-data\/quotes\/WMG\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Warner Music Group<\/a>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/market-data\/quotes\/WMG\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">WMG\u00a0-0.23%decrease; red down pointing triangle<\/a>\u00a0and Sony Music Group want to be compensated by\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/tech\/ai\/music-labels-take-on-generative-ai-startups-with-new-lawsuits-c55e93b3?mod=article_inline\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">startups Suno and Udio<\/a>\u00a0when music by artists they represent is used to train generative AI models and produce new music, according to people familiar with the talks.<\/p>\n<p>To determine how much artists and labels should be paid, the companies want the startups to develop fingerprinting and attribution technology\u2014similar to YouTube\u2019s content ID\u2014to track when and how a song is used, the people said.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, the music companies want to be active participants in the music-related products that the AI companies release, including having a say in which products are developed and how they work.<\/p>\n<p>The companies represent some of the most popular artists, such as Taylor Swift, Drake and Ed Sheeran. News of the negotiations was reported earlier by Bloomberg.<\/p>\n<p>The negotiations are a sign of how record labels, like movie studios, book publishers and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/business\/media\/openai-news-corp-strike-deal-23f186ba?mod=article_inline\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">news organizations<\/a>\u00a0such as The Wall Street Journal\u2019s owner\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/market-data\/quotes\/NWSA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News Corp<\/a>, are trying to protect against the threat that generative AI poses to their business while creating new revenue streams.<\/p>\n<p>The Recording Industry Association of America, the music industry\u2019s trade group, filed a lawsuit last June against Suno and Udio, alleging the firms were infringing on artists\u2019 and labels\u2019 copyrights.<\/p>\n<p>Suno said its technology was creating new content and not memorizing or regurgitating pre-existing music. Udio said that the goal of its training was to develop an understanding of musical ideas that aren\u2019t owned by anyone and that it has filters to ensure its model doesn\u2019t reproduce copyrighted works or artists\u2019 voices.<\/p>\n<p>Both the labels and startups are now eager to come to terms on licensing rights given a more uncertain regulatory environment and investor pressure to develop commercial frameworks for the use of music in generative AI products.<\/p>\n<p>The Trump administration\u2019s firing of U.S. Copyright Office Director\u00a0Shira Perlmutterlast month especially raised concern in the music business that the White House would favor tech companies in disputes over AI and copyright.<\/p>\n<p>Each label is negotiating with the startups individually, and the talks are at different stages of progression, the people said.<\/p>\n<p>A hurdle for the labels is how to come to commercial terms to license their catalogs at scale in a way that not only protects artists\u2019 work but also garners broad support among musicians, some of whom may be wary.<\/p>\n<p>The labels are seeking provisions for artists to be able to opt out of certain use cases.<\/p>\n<p>Any licensing agreements would likely involve a settlement of the suit between the two sides and would require some amount of damages paid for the use of music so far. Agreements would also likely involve the music companies taking stakes in the AI companies.<\/p>\n<p>Music companies often take stakes as part of licensing agreements with startups. Universal, Warner and Sony had stakes in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/market-data\/quotes\/SPOT\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Spotify<\/a>\u00a0when the music-streaming service launched.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Appeared in the June 3, 2025, print edition as &#8216;Music Labels Negotiate AI Licensing Rights&#8217;. Read original <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/business\/media\/ai-music-licensing-universal-warner-sony-92bcbc0d\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Key Points What&#8217;s This? Major labels are negotiating AI music licensing deals with Suno and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/bprworld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/AI.png?fit=825%2C544","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6568,"href":"http:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6561\/revisions\/6568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}