The Pulse
Sony and UMG Sue Suno Again Over Its V6 AI Models
Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group file a second copyright lawsuit against Suno over its V6 AI music models. The labels allege Suno copied 60,202 sound recordings and carried material from older models into its new licensed-
AI.info Team ·
Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group have filed a second copyright lawsuit against Suno, arguing that the company’s new V6 AI music models still depend on recordings the labels say Suno copied without permission.
The complaint, filed on September 18, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, identifies 60,202 sound recordings that the labels allege Suno reproduced and used to build the models behind its music-generation service. The case follows a June 2024 lawsuit that covers an earlier, smaller group of works.
Suno says V6 was trained from scratch using licensed material connected to partnerships with Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe. The labels say that account leaves out the way Suno allegedly used outputs and preference data from older models trained on unlicensed recordings.
Sony and UMG challenge Suno’s “fresh start” claim
Suno launched the V6 model family on September 9, one day after announcing a strategic partnership with Believe. The company has also announced partnerships with BMG and Warner Music Group, agreements that Suno has presented as the foundation for a new model line built around licensed music.
Jack Brody, Suno’s chief product officer, told Music Business Worldwide at the V6 launch that “v6 was trained entirely from scratch, from the ground up,” using data that did not include material from Sony or Universal. Suno’s public position is that the new models use content licensed from partners, user interactions and preference signals from its community, along with accumulated learning from its development team.
The labels dispute that separation. Their complaint says Suno trained V6 using “interactions” with earlier versions of its service, including generated outputs and records of which outputs users preferred. Those earlier models, the labels allege, were trained on a corpus that included Sony and Universal recordings.
“Training a ‘new’ model on the outputs of an infringing model does not eliminate the infringement; it launders it.”
Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group complaint
The complaint describes V6 as “not a fresh start” and alleges that Suno used knowledge distillation, a process in which a new model learns to reproduce the behavior of an earlier model. The labels argue that the process transferred capabilities developed by earlier systems into V6, including the ability to compose and render convincing music across genres and styles.
The second case follows a judge’s August ruling
Sony and Universal initially sought to add more than 61,000 additional works to their first case. On August 18, Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV rejected that request without prejudice, primarily because the amendment would disrupt the schedule of the existing litigation. The judge said the labels could pursue valid claims in a separate action.
The new complaint says the 60,202 recordings represent only a portion of the works Suno allegedly copied. The labels say they identified recordings in Suno’s training data through forensic analysis, including work by audio-fingerprinting company Audible Magic during discovery in the first case.
The filing also accuses Suno of obtaining some recordings through “stream ripping” from YouTube, allegedly bypassing technical measures intended to prevent unauthorized downloading. Suno acknowledged in a September 1 filing that it obtained audio from YouTube using the YT-DLP tool, while challenging whether Sony and Universal can pursue the related claim.
Licensing deals become evidence in the dispute
Sony and Universal use Suno’s recent commercial agreements to support their argument that licensing recorded music for AI training is an established market. Suno settled with Warner Music Group in November 2025, announced a global partnership with BMG on August 12, 2026, and announced its Believe partnership on September 8.
The complaint describes the three agreements as evidence that Suno recognizes permission is required to use copyrighted recordings for model training. Suno has characterized the partnerships as a way to create new revenue opportunities for artists, songwriters and rights holders, while the labels argue that the deals also weaken Suno’s claim that unlicensed training qualifies as fair use.
“Three agreements with three major rightsholders in less than a year confirm that a functioning market exists for licensing sound recordings to train generative AI models,” the complaint states.
The labels’ argument targets one of the central questions in the first case: whether training a commercial music generator on copyrighted recordings can qualify as fair use. They say Suno’s service produces digital files that compete with human-made recordings and therefore affects both existing markets and potential licensing markets.
Suno calls the lawsuit flawed
A Suno spokesperson told Variety that the labels’ claims are “fundamentally flawed on both the facts and the law.” The company said its system draws on “musical qualities” when a user enters an artist’s name, not to reproduce another person’s work but to help users learn the language of music and create something of their own.
“We have doubled down on this goal, launching v6 in partnership with WMG, BMG, and Believe,” the spokesperson said. Suno also said V6 was trained on licensed partner content, community interactions and preference signals, as well as the accumulated learning of its team.
The company’s response leaves the dispute focused on whether model outputs and user preference data can carry protected expression from older systems into a new model, even when the newer model’s direct training set excludes recordings owned by the plaintiffs. The labels say that chain of development is enough to keep the alleged infringement alive.
Two Suno cases now move in parallel
The second lawsuit seeks damages, a jury trial and an order barring Suno from further use of the labels’ recordings. It names UMG Recordings, Capitol Records and several Sony-affiliated labels as plaintiffs alongside the parent companies.
The original lawsuit, filed in June 2024, remains focused on an earlier set of 560 works and on Suno’s fair-use defense. Fact discovery in that case is scheduled to close on September 30, 2026.
The new filing gives the labels a separate route to pursue the larger group of recordings uncovered during discovery. It also puts Suno’s V6 launch directly into the copyright fight just days after the company presented the model as the beginning of a licensed-data phase.