The music industry is suing Suno and licensing it at the same time. Suno, which Sony and Universal accuse of training on their recordings without permission, on Wednesday replaced its existing models with the v6 generation, built on music licensed from Warner Music Group, BMG and the French group Believe. The older models, trained on data taken from the internet, can be retired.

The business that until now ran on unlicensed data is shifting to contractual partners, revenue sharing and a paid account. For a brand that approaches creators as a buyer, both the supplier and the price of the tool are changing.

Three v6 models and new features

The new range has three models. The flagship v6 and the experimental v6-wild are for Pro and Premier subscribers, while the faster v6-mini is free for everyone. Chief product officer Jack Brody described the model as “trained entirely from scratch, from the ground up” on “a combination of data that's been licensed from these partners, user data”, and said it “doesn't include data from Universal or Sony”. The user data here means preference signals from generated versions, not uploaded audio files.

The models add editing controls that move Suno from a song generator towards an editor. According to TechCrunch, users can change part of a track with a prompt or a word in the lyrics, use text, an image or a video as a reference, and separate an instrument from a sample to build a new beat. The company also plans remixes of other artists' songs, if the artist concerned gives consent.

Settlement with Warner and revenue sharing

The move to licences is the result of legal pressure. Warner Music Group reached an agreement with Suno and settled its lawsuit on 25 November 2025. As part of the deal, Suno took over the concert discovery platform Songkick from Warner, and artists and songwriters received full control over whether and how their name, likeness, voice and songs are used. “This landmark pact with Suno is a victory for the creative community,” Warner chief Robert Kyncl said at the time, according to Music Business Worldwide. Suno signed a deal with BMG in August 2026.

The economics of the deals rest on revenue sharing. Part of what Suno earns will go to partners, who will distribute payments further. At a later stage, opt-in experiences built around specific artists are meant to emerge, which artists can join and get paid for. Brody frames this as a business opportunity. “I think the music ecosystem and our partners are always looking for ways to create more revenue opportunities for their rights holders and artists. So a big part of this release is creating additional revenue streams there,” he told TechCrunch.

Lawsuits the deals do not resolve

Neither Warner nor BMG covers the whole field. Sony Music and Universal Music Group are pursuing separate lawsuits against Suno for training on unlicensed recordings, and Brody's remark that v6 does not include their data is clearly aimed at them. Competitor Udio, meanwhile, settled the same dispute with Universal as early as 29 October 2025 and is preparing a licensed platform of its own with it.

A new kind of claim was opened by Jason Isbell at the end of August. Together with other musicians, he filed a class action with seventeen counts in federal court in Massachusetts on 31 August. The target is not the copying of individual songs. They object that the platform lets users enter an artist's name and generate music in their style and sound, an intrusion into the right of publicity and identity that catalogue licences do not cover.

More disputes are coming. Suno users are suing, claiming that in their view the company “ignored security while chasing profits”. And a day before the v6 announcement, Suno admitted that it had trained its models on YouTube videos. Despite all the disputes, the company has raised over $819 million, according to PitchBook data.

For creators who use Suno, the access rules are changing. Under the Warner agreement, songs from the free tier can no longer be downloaded. They will remain playable and shareable, and paid accounts have received monthly download limits with the option to buy more. A model that lured users with unlimited free generation is moving towards subscriptions.

Who gets into the training data is also changing. The big deals cover only the catalogues of major labels, and independent artists have not so far been at the licensing table. Believe is adding music from participating artists at TuneCore to the models, which opens a path for them too, but through consent and with a claim to a share. Whether an opt-in model becomes the standard will be decided in the coming months, at the two largest labels, which are holding lawsuits instead of signing.

By Tereza Tiller