Sony Music files new Udio lawsuit citing over 30k recordings

The judge in Sony Music’s legal battle with Udio recently barred the major from adding more than 30k sound recordings to its lawsuit. Now it’s taking a different path: filing a second copyright infringement lawsuit with those extra tracks.

Fans of 1,102-page documents (not to mention nosy rival labels) can find the full list here, although even this is described as “only a small portion” of the recordings that Sony Music claims have been used to train Udio’s models.

The label is thus turning up the heat on Udio, despite its fellow majors having settled their lawsuits and signed licensing deals with the company in recent months, fuelling its work on a new, licensed service.

This is one of two notable cracks in the united front presented by the majors on AI – the other being the fact that Warner Music Group has settled with Suno and licensed that company, while UMG and Sony are still suing it.

At our Music Ally Connect conference in January, UMG’s Jonathan Dworkin heavily praised Udio and its CEO Andrew Sanchez, saying “you could not find a more lovely human being… His attitude from the start was ‘look, we know that we didn’t do this the right way, and we want to make it right’.”

“It’s kind of weird. You’re kind of waiting for the mask to slip and see that the guy’s actually evil, but the truth is that he’s not. He’s very sincere.”

However, Sony Music seems just as sincere in its determination to hold Udio’s feet to the legal flames – although you’d be forgiven for thinking that this approach is ultimately geared towards striking as good a deal as possible with the company if and when a settlement is reached.