WhoSung

Story timeline14 eventsJun 2024 – Oct 21, 2026

Suno, Udio and the label lawsuits: timeline

From the 2024 major-label suits to the 2025 settlements, GEMA’s Munich win, the 2026 suits over Suno v6 and Udio, and the October 2026 Reservoir suits and subpoena fights. Each event links the filing or the reporting.

Checked Oct 23, 2026 16 sources from 13 publishers Report an error

What happened, in order

Oldest first

2024

  1. Event 1 of 14

    All three major labels, through the RIAA, sue Suno and Udio, alleging copyright infringement “on a massive scale” in how the models were trained.

2025

  1. Event 2 of 14

    Universal Music Group settles with Udio; the two plan a licensed music creation and streaming service for 2026.

  2. Event 3 of 14

    Warner Music Group settles with Udio and agrees to build a licensed creation service for 2026.

  3. Event 4 of 14

    Warner Music Group settles with Suno, signs a partnership deal and sells it the concert app Songkick.

2026

  1. Event 5 of 14

    The Verge, citing 404 Media, reports that hacked Suno files show it scraped songs and lyrics from YouTube Music, Deezer and Genius.

  2. Event 6 of 14

    Sony Music files a second lawsuit against Udio in New York, alleging infringement of more than 30,000 recordings.

  3. Event 7 of 14

    The Munich District Court (first instance, appealable) rules largely for German collecting society GEMA against Suno over six compositions and rejects Suno’s fair-use defence.

  4. Event 8 of 14

    In a filing in the UMG and Sony case, Suno admits using “audio data obtained from YouTube” as training data, while arguing fair use.

  5. Event 9 of 14

    Universal Music Group sues the distributor DistroKid in federal court, alleging copyright infringement and violations of Delaware’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act, and that DistroKid is “flooding platforms with AI-generated ‘slop’”. DistroKid denies wrongdoing.

  6. Event 10 of 14

    Sony Music and UMG file a new suit against Suno, alleging its label-backed v6 model is “the fruit of the same poisoned tree”.

  7. Event 11 of 14

    UMG and Sony Music ask a Manhattan federal court to force DistroKid, which is not a party to the Suno case, to hand over monthly data on how many uploads its AI-detection model flags. DistroKid says it is a third party and will “continue to cooperate with the legal process”.

  8. Event 12 of 14

    Suno asks a federal court in Nashville to enforce its subpoena on the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) for label-by-label streaming data from 2021 on, for its defence in the UMG and Sony case. Suno says the MLC confirmed it could produce the data and then reversed course; the MLC told Suno it would oppose the motion.

  9. Event 13 of 14

    In its answer to UMG and Sony’s Sep 18 suit, Suno admits it “has not deleted all of the sound recordings it has used to train its AI models”, saying this is consistent with the labels’ pre-suit demand that it retain the data sets used to train its models. It says v6 was trained on licensed content and user signals, and denies the remaining allegations.

  10. Event 14 of 14

    The publisher Reservoir sues Suno and Anthropic in federal court in Northern California. It alleges Suno trained on 1,050 of its compositions, including “Ring of Fire” and “Both Sides Now”, and that Anthropic copied 853 of its works to train Claude. Anthropic says it disagrees and will defend the case; Suno declined to comment to Billboard.

What it means

Sources

  1. Music Ally: UMG settles Udio lawsuit musically.com · checked Oct 23, 2026
  2. Warner Music Group: WMG and Udio collaborate to build a new licensed music creation service wmg.com · checked Oct 23, 2026
  3. TechCrunch: Warner Music signs deal with AI music startup Suno, settles lawsuit techcrunch.com · checked Oct 23, 2026
  4. The Verge: Suno snatched millions of songs from YouTube, Genius, and Deezer theverge.com · checked Oct 23, 2026
  5. The Next Web: Sony sued Udio again over 30,000 songs thenextweb.com · checked Oct 23, 2026
  6. Bird & Bird: Munich District Court rules on AI-generated music: GEMA v Suno twobirds.com · checked Oct 23, 2026
  7. Paste: Suno admits to using music from YouTube to train its AI models pastemagazine.com · checked Oct 23, 2026
  8. Billboard: Universal Music sues DistroKid over AI songs billboard.com · checked Oct 23, 2026
  9. Variety: Sony Music, Universal Music Group sue Suno over label-backed model v6 variety.com · checked Oct 23, 2026
  10. Billboard: UMG & Sony demand DistroKid tell how many AI songs it uploads from Suno billboard.com · checked Oct 23, 2026
  11. Music Business Worldwide: UMG and Sony ask court to force DistroKid to hand over AI music data for Suno case musicbusinessworldwide.com · checked Oct 23, 2026
  12. US District Court, Middle District of Tennessee (via CourtListener): Suno, Inc. v. Mechanical Licensing Collective, 3:26-mc-00021, motion to enforce subpoena courtlistener.com · checked Oct 23, 2026
  13. Digital Music News: Suno v. MLC subpoena dispute boils over digitalmusicnews.com · checked Oct 23, 2026
  14. US District Court, District of Massachusetts (filing hosted by Music Business Worldwide): UMG Recordings, Inc. v. Suno, Inc., 1:26-cv-14275, Suno’s answer (Document 11, filed Oct 20, 2026) musicbusinessworldwide.com · checked Oct 23, 2026
  15. Billboard: Reservoir sues Suno & Anthropic in latest lawsuits over AI music billboard.com · checked Oct 23, 2026
  16. Music Business Worldwide: Reservoir sues Suno and Anthropic for infringing songs by Joni Mitchell, Johnny Cash, Madonna and more musicbusinessworldwide.com · checked Oct 23, 2026