Sony Music v. Udio Lawsuit Heats Up Amid Stream-Ripping Dispute

Photo Credit: Rashidul Islam

Still fending off a high-stakes lawsuit from Sony Music, Udio is doubling down on its longstanding fair use arguments and defending its training-related ingestion of “audio data from YouTube.”

The AI music generator just recently touched on these and other noteworthy subjects when answering Sony Music’s amended action. As we reported, the retooled suit arrived in October 2025 – right around when Universal Music and then Warner Music settled with and licensed Udio.

Meanwhile, Udio is preparing to take advantage of the pacts by rolling out fresh products. Even so, Sony Music is plowing ahead, and the case is factoring into the ongoing legal battle between Suno and the non-Warner Music majors as well.

Here, the short version is that “stream ripping,” or the process of allegedly circumventing YouTube antipiracy measures to extract audio from videos, is now front and center in multiple industry complaints against AI giants.

The way the various plaintiffs – meaning the majors, publishers, artists themselves, and different parties – see things, said AI giants allegedly violated the DMCA when ripping protected audio without authorization.

As for the exact intersection of Sony Music v. Udio and UMG v. Suno, the former case in April saw Judge Alvin Hellerstein reject a dismissal request from the AI developer. Sony Music, the judge found, had plausibly alleged “that YouTube employs technological measures that regulate access to its content and that [Udio] circumvented them.”

“Whether YouTube’s measures ultimately constitute access controls within the meaning of § 1201 [of the DMCA] requires a greater factual record than the pleadings contain. Defendants may renew their arguments after a factual record is developed,” Judge Hellerstein continued.

The access-versus-copy control debate is an important one; in a nutshell, the DMCA allows bypassing the latter but not the former, we broke down in detail. In any event, “greater factual record” requirement aside, Sony Music and Universal Music quickly cited the decision in their Suno suit.

Back to the Udio action, the platform has seemingly gone all in on its stream-ripping defense. Though a bit heavy on legalese, the aforementioned answer to Sony Music’s complaint directly acknowledges the use of audio from YouTube for training.

“Udio admits that it obtained audio data from YouTube for use as training data,” the text reads, proceeding to elaborate that Udio “acquired some of its training data by utilizing YT-DLP,” which is reportedly a stream-ripping platform.

With that, the stream-ripping sub-dispute is out in the open – with serious implications for the lengthy list of complaints against AI developers. Both Udio and Sony Music recently requested and received a discovery-deadline extension, and the presiding judge rescheduled a status conference for July 10th.

Closer to the present, there are arguably more questions than ever about the AI music landscape. With UMG and WMG having already settled, as highlighted, how much further will SME take its Udio suit?

Will the Warner Music-Suno tie-up make way for different agreements? And with these platforms, Klay Vision’s forthcoming offering, and separate AI operations picking up steam, will there be any room left for Spotify to make a gen AI splash of its own?

Again, plenty of questions and relatively few answers. For now, all eyes are on the growing pile of complaints targeting not only Suno and Udio, but Anthropic, Google, and others yet.