As Some Labels Strike Deals With Suno, Artist Reps Sound Off: ‘It’s the Wild, Wild West’
Billboard ·
With Suno unveiling its new v6 music models in partnership with WMG and others, managers and lawyers offer their takes on the rapidly evolving AI music landscape.
Suno’s deal with BMG, announced last month , has turned into a referendum on artists’ feelings about AI. Mötley Crüe , for example, is OK with it. “BMG has asked them, and they’re saying, ‘As long as you made a deal where we get paid, we’ll opt in,’” says Allen Kovac , manager of the veteran hard-rock band, which sold its recorded-music catalog to the label in 2021 for a number reported at between $90 million and $150 million. “It promotes your music. It doesn’t dilute your music.” He adds that “a million Mötley Crüe cover bands” over the years have demonstrated fans are still willing to pay for the real thing as opposed to turning the copycats into stars who might cannibalize the group’s original music.
To say the least, not every artist or artist rep is feeling so bullish about music companies’ deals with Suno, the AI music firm valued at $5.4 billion that claims 2 million paid users and 100 million who have created songs with its service. This is true even in cases like BMG, which has said its partnership with Suno includes an opt-in clause, effectively allowing its artists and songwriters to accept or reject the use of their music to train AI systems and generate works.
Even though it’s opt-in, “none of our clients will be doing that,” says Dina LaPolt , a longtime music attorney. But, she adds: “Kudos to BMG for opt-in vs. opt-out.”
Along with BMG, companies including Warner Music Group (WMG) and Believe have struck partnerships with Suno — the former after dropping its lawsuit against the platform last November — which unveiled its new v6 music models on Sept. 9. (Suno is still the subject of copyright lawsuits from Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, including a new one the two majors jointly filed on Sept. 18, that added 61,000 songs to the legal battle and argued Suno’s v6 music models were just “fruit of the same poisoned tree.” Individual artists such as singer-songwriter Jason Isbell have also filed lawsuits that accuse the platform of using their copyrighted works without permission.)
The exact nature of these deals, in terms of whether artists and songwriters must give permission for their music to be used in training and outputs, isn’t entirely clear. At the time it announced its partnership with Suno, WMG also said artists and songwriters would retain “an opt-in for the use of their name, image, likeness, voice and compositions in new AI songs.” And Believe CEO Denis Ladegaillerie recently told Music Business Worldwide that artists at Believe and Tunecore “must consent first, period,” before being opted in.
Despite these statements, it remains unclear how the companies that have recently struck partnerships with Suno will determine which music will be available as part of the deals. In announcing its new v6 music models, a Suno exec said, “For the data that’s been licensed to train on, that’s managed by the rightsholders. So Warner has basically figured out which music to hand over as part of that process for training.”
According to Harold Papineau , a partner with King, Holmes, Paterno and Soriano, a law firm whose clients have included Metallica , Dr. Dre and The Killers , not every artist contract may allow the artist to opt out. “Even though Warner may be allowing opt-in on certain licensing deals, [that] doesn’t mean they’re going to do it for all such deals,” he says.
Many label and publisher agreements with artists may allow them to grant licenses to Suno, as well as Udio and other AI companies, “to use the artist’s music to train these AI systems,” Papineau adds. Although top artists like Taylor Swift or Drake presumably have the leverage to rewrite their deals and prevent their music from being used without explicit permission, other artists may not have this level of clout. “It’s hard to argue there’s somehow some way to stop this from happening,” Papineau says.
Although Papineau hasn’t spoken to BMG reps about the company’s Aug. 11 deal with Suno, he is hopeful that its opt-in clause will cover all of its artists regardless of contract terms. “We see them doing the right thing, which is nice, because we don’t see that’s the case everywhere,” he says.
A Warner rep did not respond to a request for comment, but Celine Joshua , BMG’s executive vp of global marketing and streaming, says “opt out” is basically the default for artists and songwriters signed to the company. “This isn’t a blanket deal without consent,” she says. “You would only have to opt in, and then there are various options.”
For all the artists who’ve criticized AI — after discovering music AI systems that trained from 238 of her songs, SZA said in June, “If your a musician and you support this degenerate s—? Your disgusting and there’s NOTHING YOU COULD EVER SAY TO ME TO MAKE THIS OKAY” — some may be open to the idea if they’re properly compensated. “I probably would advise them to do it,” says Ben McLane , a music attorney who represents Afroman , The Wrecks and others. “This is just the wave of the future. I don’t think you can really stop it or slow it down.”
The key, according to McLane, is to determine how to divide up the royalty payments. Suno’s recent deal announcements with BMG, Warner and others have conspicuously not specified “how much of this revenue will trickle down to writers and artists,” McLane says. “It’s just going to be a business of pennies and fractions of pennies, but it could, over time, aggregate and be big. If you wait, you might just be left in the cold.”
Eric Greenspan , a top music attorney, says artists contemplating AI systems must ensure their contracts give them the right to opt out.
“The landscape is changing every day. Companies are trying to anticipate things in contracts that don’t make sense in the long term,” he says. “Everybody has different opinions on what to do. Nobody knows. Suno is coming up with new plans. Udio is coming up with new plans. It’s the wild, wild West while artists and labels and tech companies try to figure out their business models.”