Warner Music drops lawsuit against AI music platform Suno in exchange for licensing agreement (www.engadget.com)

Warner Music Group has dropped its lawsuit against AI music startup Suno in exchange for a licensing and business agreement that lets Suno use WMG artists’ music and likenesses only with artists’ consent. Under the deal artists and songwriters will have opt-in control over use of their names, images, voices and compositions in AI-generated tracks. Suno agreed to introduce “new, more advanced and licensed models” in 2026 (current models will be deprecated), and to restrict downloads — free-tier songs remain playable/shareable but not downloadable, while paid users get limited monthly download caps with options to buy more. As part of the arrangement Suno is also acquiring WMG’s Songkick concert-discovery service. The settlement matters because it sets a practical industry precedent for resolving generative-music copyright disputes through licensing and rights-management rather than litigation. Technically, it pushes Suno toward curated, licensed training data and model versions rather than its prior admission that it trained on “essentially all music files…accessible on the open internet” under a fair-use rationale — a practice that many rights holders argued was infringing. The deal signals broader commercial models for AI music: artist opt-in/compensation, tiered access controls, and lifecycle management of model versions; WMG is reportedly pursuing similar agreements with other platforms (e.g., YouTube), so this could shape norms for how generative audio models acquire training data and monetize creations going forward.