Following its licensing deal with Udio, Warner Music Group (WMG) has also reached an agreement with Listen, which will allow the platform to license the music and likeness of its artists, and end the music company’s ongoing litigation. WMG was previously one of several record labels to sue Udio and Suno for allegedly infringing copyright works on a “large scale”.
As part of the agreement, “Artists and songwriters will have full control over how their names, images, likenesses, voices and compositions are used in new AI-generated music,” WMG explains in its press release for the announcement. WMG hasn’t said how this will work for musicians affected by the deal, but it appears that participation will be opt-in rather than shared by default. This reflects the opt-in structure of the company’s Udio deal.
“AI becomes an artist supporter when it adheres to our principles: being committed to the licensing model, reflecting the value of music on and off the stage, and providing artists and songwriters an opt-in for the use of their name, image, likeness, voice and compositions in new AI songs,” says Robert Kincl, CEO of WMG.
Presumably as a condition of the new partnership, Suno will also make adjustments to its AI music platform. WMG says Listen is launching “new, more advanced and licensed models” in 2026, after which its existing models will be discontinued. The company will also limit music downloads to paid accounts. WMG says, “In the future, songs created on the free tier will not be downloadable and will instead be playable and shareable. Paid tier users will have limited monthly download caps with the ability to pay for more downloads.”
In a strange twist on the partnership, Listen is also acquiring WMG’s Songkick concert discovery platform. The company plans to continue this, and WMG claims that “the combination of Listen and Songkick will create new capabilities to deepen the artist-fan connection.” An app for finding nearby concerts isn’t entirely in line with Listen’s existing music creation tools, but perhaps it suggests the company is interested in introducing more social features in the future.
Prior to this settlement, Listen had openly admitted to using “essentially all music files of fair quality that are accessible on the open Internet” to train its AI models under the auspices of fair use. This seems like a pretty blatant admission of copyright infringement, but apparently Warner Music Group is happier with the deals they made than what they could have won through their lawsuit. The company is reportedly one of several music groups looking to make a similar deal with YouTube.
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