Universal Music Group has confirmed its lawsuit against AI firm Udio has been settled. The companies have also announced plans to launch a new platform for creation, consumption and streaming in 2026.
Compensation costs had not been made public at the time of writing.
The case against Udio was brought about based on claims that the tech firm had used copyrighted materials at “an industrial scale“, without permission, to train its artificial intelligence model. The platform allows users to produce tracks on demand via prompts, a service which is now considered a direct threat to the viability and sustainability of human-made recorded music.
This is one of several significant claims filed last year by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on behalf of the music industry’s three majors: Universal, Warner and Sony. The latter two are still pursuing Udio, while all three entities are involved in similar cases against another AI firm, Suno.
Central to litigation was the idea that systems designed for musical output from simple commands would “directly compete with, cheapen and ultimately drown out” human artists. This point has been reiterated by a number of professional bodies within the context of both independent and shareholder-owned labels.
However, Universal and Udio have now confirmed the collaborative development of an as-yet-unnamed subscription platform. Due to go live in 2026, this will allow users to customise, stream and share sounds within what has been described was a “licensed and protected environment”.
“These new agreements with Udio demonstrate our commitment to do what’s right by our artists and songwriters, whether that means embracing new technologies, developing new business models, diversifying revenue streams or beyond,” said Sir Lucian Grainge, Chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group.
Until then, Udio’s existing product will still be available, including Universal-owned materials, albeit in a “walled garden” setting with some changes. These include “fingerprinting, filtering, and other measures” designed to prevent copyright infringement.
Earlier this year, Suno AI CEO Mikey Shulman was widely criticised for claiming “it’s not really enjoyable to make music now” and “the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music”.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source djmag.com ’
