Chapter 112: AI Music and the Litigation Wars

Where This Book Runs Out of Past Tense

Time traveller, every previous chapter in this book asked you to visit somewhere the argument was already over — a myth already debunked, a court case already decided, a genre already named, however messily. This last one is different, and this book isn't going to pretend otherwise. What follows hasn't finished happening yet. Some of it might not have finished happening by the time you read this sentence, whenever that turns out to be. Two Lawsuits, Filed the Same Day In June 2024, the Recording Industry Association of America, acting on behalf of Sony Music, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group, filed twin lawsuits against two generative AI music platforms: Suno, in federal court in Massachusetts, and Udio, in the Southern District of New York.[^1] Both companies stood accused of training their systems on the labels' copyrighted recordings without licence or payment, seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work.[^2] By early 2026, Suno alone reported roughly two million paying subscribers, making it, by some distance, the most commercially significant defendant in the entire dispute.[^3] The Same Three Labels, Three Completely Different Strategies What h

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