The American Federation of Musicians (AFM) has filed a lawsuit alleging its members aren’t sharing in the upside of the major labels’ landmark licensing settlements with AI music companies Suno and Udio.
AFM, the union for session musicians, is suing Universal Music Group (UMG) and Warner Music Group (WMG) for breach of their collective bargaining agreement. The lawsuit, filed on Friday (June 5) and first obtained and reported by Billboard, focuses on copyright settlements that the two majors reached at the end of 2025 for popular music AI models to be trained on licensed works.
“The AFM brings this lawsuit because defendants, two of the largest music companies in the world, have licensed sound recordings on which AFM-represented musicians have worked, without compensation or credit, to two AI companies,” reads the complaint. “At the same time, they have refused to provide information to the AFM about which recordings and whose work is being licensed.”
UMG and WMG, alongside fellow major Sony, sued Suno and Udio in 2024, claiming both AI models had been illegally trained on millions of copyrighted recordings. UMG and WMG both settled with Udio in the fall, striking deals for the company to train a new model on licensed work that will remain within a “walled garden” on the platform. WMG later settled with Suno as well, agreeing to a licensed training model that allows for off-platform distribution. UMG is still suing Suno, and Sony has not settled with either company.
Now, Suno and Udio are both in the process of building new models based on licensed music. But AFM alleges in Friday’s lawsuit that they aren’t sharing in the proceeds of the major labels’ training licenses.
“While the defendants protected their own interests and created a significant source of new revenue with the retrospective settlements and prospective licenses, they have refused to compensate the musicians whose work — created with their own instruments and through their talent, creativity, and hard work – is fed into AI machines for profit,” reads the lawsuit.
AFM says this is a violation of its collective bargaining agreement, which requires the majors to compensate its members for “new uses” of their music. The union also says it’s entitled to know what specific recordings are being fed into Suno and Udio’s training sets, but that WMG and UMG have not provided this information.
Reps for UMG, WMG, Suno and Udio did not immediately return requests for comment on the lawsuit.
