Ai, first historic agreement between Universal Music and Udio
The major is the first label to reach an agreement with the generative artificial intelligence start-up, ending a dispute that began in 2024
First historic agreement between a major record company and a generative artificial intelligence startup. The world's first record company, Amsterdam-listed Universal Music Group, said it has settled its copyright infringement lawsuit with Ai company Udio and that together they will collaborate on a new suite of creative products.
Under the agreement, the companies will launch a platform next year that harnesses generative artificial intelligence trained on licensed and authorised music. Umg president Lucian Grainge emphasises that the agreements 'demonstrate our commitment to doing what is right for our artists and songwriters, whether it's embracing new technologies, developing new business models, diversifying revenue streams or more'.
For Udio CEO Andrew Sanchez the companies are "building the technological and commercial landscape that will fundamentally expand the possibilities in music creation and engagement".
In 2024, all the majors, namely Universal Music itself but also Sony Music and Warner Music, had sued Udio and competitor Suno, accusing them of committing massive copyright infringement by using label recordings to train music-generating Ai systems. According to the record companies' argument, artificial intelligence companies copied hundreds of tracks by some of the world's most famous musicians to teach their systems to create music that would "directly compete with that of human artists, devalue it and ultimately stifle it".
At the time, Suno and Udio argued that using copyrighted sound recordings to train their systems was a legitimate use under US copyright law and described the disputes in question as attempts to stifle independent competition.
