The American Federation of Musicians filed a federal lawsuit Friday (June 5) in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York against Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, alleging the two companies licensed recordings made by union members to AI music platforms Suno and Udio without paying or crediting the session musicians whose performances appear on those recordings. The AFM is the largest union of instrumental musicians in the United States and Canada, representing the session players, orchestral musicians, and studio professionals whose work forms the bedrock of recorded music. The lawsuit, which spans 16 pages, brings a breach of contract claim centered on a specific provision of the union’s collective bargaining agreement with the major labels, and is seeking unspecified monetary damages alongside an order requiring UMG and WMG to disclose exactly which recordings were fed into the AI training datasets.
The legal mechanism at the center of the case is Article 21 of the AFM’s Sound Recording Labor Agreement, which requires major labels to compensate union members when their recorded work is put to a “new use” commercially. The AFM argues that UMG’s settlement with Udio in October 2025 and Warner’s settlements with both Udio and Suno in November 2025 constituted exactly that: a new commercial use of recordings that entitled the musicians on those recordings to payment. The complaint is direct about what the union believes happened: “While the Defendants protected their own interests and created a significant source of new revenue with the retrospective settlements and prospective licenses, they have refused to compensate the musicians whose work, created with their own instruments and through their talent, creativity, and hard work, is fed into AI machines for profit.” The union also alleges the labels have refused to provide any information about which recordings were included in the AI training sets, making it impossible for the AFM or its members to verify the scope of the use.
The timing of the lawsuit, filed two days after Suno announced a $400 million funding round at a $5.4 billion valuation, underlines the core grievance. As the AI music platforms attract massive investment and the labels generate settlement proceeds and future licensing revenue from those arrangements, the people whose performances were ingested into the training data have received nothing. The AFM’s complaint makes that contrast explicit: “The AFM brings this lawsuit because defendants, two of the largest music companies in the world, have licensed sound recordings on which AFM-represented musicians have worked, without compensation or credit, to two AI companies. At the same time, they have refused to provide information to the AFM about which recordings and whose work is being licensed.”
Both labels have responded by characterizing the lawsuit as premature and counterproductive given ongoing collective bargaining negotiations. A UMG spokesperson said the company “has been at the forefront of protecting the rights and advancing the interests of artists and songwriters in the age of AI,” adding: “The AFM chose this route during our collective bargaining negotiations, and we will continue to work to resolve any issues through these negotiations, as we have in the past.” Warner Music Group was more pointed: “We are disappointed by the AFM’s unproductive action amid our ongoing negotiations. We look forward to resuming our negotiations as scheduled.” Both labels framed their AI licensing deals as creating new revenue streams and protections for artists, characterizing the AFM’s claims as a negotiating tactic being litigated in the wrong venue.
