Suno has started training its newest models on licensed music, closing the first of the copyright lawsuits brought against it by the major record labels. According to a VICE report published on 9 September 2026, Warner Music Group was the first major label to settle with the AI music company, a characterisation VICE attributes to Rolling Stone. Warner and Suno announced their partnership in November 2025, at around the time the settlement was reached, and the launch in September 2026 is the first visible result of that arrangement.
What Suno says about the new models
Jack Brody, Suno's chief product officer, told Rolling Stone that the newest models were trained on content supplied by the company's partners, a group that now includes Warner Music Group under a contract agreed in 2025. He described the models as "trained from the ground up on licensed data provided to us by our partners, user data, and then the accumulation of all the learnings that have gone into it", and called the release "the first model developed in partnership directly with the industry".
Mikey Shulman, Suno's chief executive, used a blog post to describe the arrangement as "a blueprint for how AI and the music industry can strengthen one another and build entirely new product experiences for artists, fans, and the broader music community". VICE summarises his position as the belief that this marks the beginning of a new chapter for music.
A product built on licensed catalogue
The licensed songs serve more than training. The new product will let Suno users work directly with licensed music, and the recordings involved are said to come only from artists who have opted in. Brody pushed back on the idea that the deal is chiefly about training data: "The wrong way to think about this partnership is to think about it as a desire to license the data for our models. This partnership is really about building these new products out in the future."
The other lawsuits continue
Warner Music Group, together with the other major labels, sued Suno for copyright infringement in 2024. The settlement resolves only Warner's case. Sony Music and Universal Music Group are still pursuing their lawsuits against the company, so a substantial part of the legal pressure that preceded this deal remains in place.
What has not been disclosed
Neither Suno nor Warner Music Group has disclosed how many licensed songs were provided, or whether artists could opt out of the use of their work. Brody said Suno itself was not involved in choosing the songs. The opt-in element described in coverage attaches to the recordings users can manipulate inside the new product. The source does not confirm whether an equivalent consent mechanism applies to the training corpus.
What is established and what is merely claimed
Established: Warner Music Group and Suno settled the label's 2024 copyright lawsuit and announced a partnership in November 2025; Suno launched new models in September 2026 built under that partnership; Sony Music and Universal Music Group have not settled, and their lawsuits continue; the number of licensed songs supplied, and the availability of any artist opt-out, remain undisclosed.
Claimed but not independently verified: that Warner was the first major label to settle with Suno, which VICE attributes to reports from Rolling Stone; Brody's account that the new models were trained from the ground up on licensed partner data and user data; the assertion that the licensed music in the new product comes only from artists who opted in, which the source itself qualifies as alleged; and Shulman's framing of the deal as a blueprint for the industry, which is a statement of intent rather than a demonstrated outcome.