Suno Doubles Down on Push to Conceal Its Warner Music Deal

Photo Credit: Suno

The battle over Warner Music’s Suno licensing deal just got even uglier: Now, the AI music platform has officially fired back against Universal Music’s and Sony Music’s continued push to obtain a copy of the contract.

As many know, said push, one component of a broader infringement showdown, has been in motion for a while now. Back in April, the magistrate judge overseeing the case’s marathon discovery process denied the non-Warner majors’ related request.

In doing so, Judge Paul Levenson explained that “the relevance of this information is marginal and the potential for chilling settlements—in this and other cases—is high.”

And with regard to the non-Warner majors’ argument that the deal proves there is, in fact, a market for licensing music IP for gen AI, “settlements of litigation have little persuasive bearing on identifying and characterizing markets for intellectual property,” according to the judge.

Evidently, the determination isn’t sitting right with Universal Music and Sony Music, which doubled down by formally objecting to the discovery denial. Suno returned fire in May and, following a July 9th hearing that apparently failed to bring about a resolution, has now dug in with a 20-page response to the objection.

The tone of this response won’t come as a surprise. In Suno’s view, Judge Levenson made a “careful,” “well-supported,” “not controversial,” “balanced,” “well-considered,” and “even-handed” decision in the face of “nonsensical” and “fundamentally misguided” arguments from Sony Music and Universal Music.

Meanwhile, Suno’s actual contentions haven’t changed. In the expansion-minded platform’s opinion, “licenses entered into against the backdrop of litigation carry limited probative value because their terms are shaped by litigation risk, not by the competitive forces that define a functioning market.”

In other words, despite Suno’s (and fellow AI giants’) longstanding position that training on protected works constitutes fair use, the Warner Music settlement and licensing pact don’t necessarily demonstrate that there’s a viable market for training, per the defendant.

“Here, any licensing terms present in the Warner settlement—which are the product of a year and a half of hard-fought litigation—are unlikely to be reflective of the market for or value of any license to use sound recordings to train generative AI, which is the admitted purpose for which they would be offered,” Suno claimed.

Additionally, turning over the contract to the remaining plaintiffs would purportedly “compromise settlement dynamics and threaten to chill future settlements by similarly situated parties” – chief among them Universal Music and Sony Music, of course.

Finally, if the plaintiffs intend to cite “Suno’s settlement with Warner as evidence that a market for licensing sound recordings as training data exists…the publicly reported fact of Suno and Warner’s license supplies them with what they need to do so,” Suno relayed.

These quotes more or less sum up Suno’s position; different parts of the response are heavy on legalese and best omitted here. In the bigger picture, it’ll be worth continuing to track the discovery dispute – including because of its relevance in separate courtroom confrontations.

To name one, the American Federation of Musicians is suing Warner Music (and Universal Music) for allegedly failing to cough up due AI licensing compensation to AFM members. As things stand, the major is looking to toss the action because the AFM allegedly sued the wrong party and because the contract in question purportedly doesn’t cover artificial intelligence.

But assuming the case proceeds on the merits, it goes without saying that the list of Warner Music tracks licensed to Suno is important to the AFM in terms of determining which members’ efforts are therefore factoring into the agreement.