Universal music group and udio announce new licensed AI music creation platform (www.universalmusic.com)

Universal Music Group and AI music startup Udio announced they’ve settled prior copyright litigation and struck industry-first licensing agreements to build a commercial, licensed AI music creation, streaming and sharing platform due in 2026. Under the deal Udio will power a subscription service using generative AI trained explicitly on authorized and licensed recorded music and publishing catalogs, with compensatory payments and ongoing revenue opportunities for UMG artists and songwriters. Udio’s current product will remain available during a transition in which creations will be kept inside a “walled garden” and the service updated with fingerprinting, filtering and other content-control measures before the relaunch. The agreement is significant because it pairs rights-holder licensing with generative-model deployment, creating a business and technical blueprint for responsible AI music tools that compensate creators. Key technical/operational details include training on licensed corpora (reducing unlicensed data risk), built-in fingerprinting/filtering to detect and control outputs, and a subscription model that monetizes usage while protecting catalogs. By resolving litigation and collaborating directly with UMG — a company that has already negotiated AI terms with platforms like YouTube and TikTok — Udio’s deal could set a commercial precedent for how the music industry and AI firms reconcile generative capabilities with rights management and creator revenue.