AI Music News
Your independent source for AI music news and what each story means for music creators.
- 05 Sept
05 SeptThe EU's tech chief will headline a Dublin copyright conference hosted by Ireland's record industry
- Henna Virkkunen, European Commission Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, will keynote the Dublin conference on October 14, 2026.
- The event is jointly hosted by the Irish Recorded Music Association and NewsBrands Ireland, with support from the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment.
- It runs as part of Ireland's Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
- 04 Sept
04 SeptLyricFind and Musixmatch shipped rival land-grab products, then told the court they will not mediate
- LyricFind and Musixmatch told a US federal court on September 3, 2026 that they have failed to agree even on starting mediation.
- LyricFind says it is willing to mediate. Musixmatch and its investor TPG say they are not open to it "due to the gap between the parties' settlement positions".
- The day before, Musixmatch launched Pro for Labels and LyricFind launched a free Verified Artist Program.
- 04 Sept
04 SeptSuno pulled the Mary J. Blige ad and says an unauthorized representative signed the deal
- Suno terminated the Mary J. Blige advertising campaign on September 3, 2026, five days after the clip started circulating.
- Suno says it signed the deal with a person who presented themselves as Blige's official representative and was not.
- Blige never approved the ad, and a representative told Variety she had no further comment.
- 03 Sept
03 SeptTrump's Justice Department told a court AI training is fair use, and music's cases run on the same question
- The Department of Justice filed a 20-page statement of interest on September 1, 2026 in the New York Times case against OpenAI and Microsoft.
- It tells the court that training a large language model on copyrighted text does not violate copyright law.
- It is the first time the US government has intervened in any of the AI copyright cases now stacked up in American courts.
- 03 Sept
03 SeptNapster has left music entirely, and now sells AI agents through Microsoft Azure
- Napster shut down its music-streaming business in January 2026 and now sells AI agents as its main product.
- The agents are sold through Microsoft Azure, Microsoft's cloud platform, rather than through a music service.
- Napster says its chat-based technology runs at roughly one cent a minute, against rivals it puts at 25 cents to $1.
- 03 Sept
03 SeptSOCAN sues Suno in Canada, and the claim goes after the outputs, not the training
- SOCAN filed a 42-page statement of claim against Suno in the Federal Court of Canada on September 2, 2026.
- The claim targets Suno's outputs and the streaming of those outputs to Canadian users, not the copying that trained the model.
- It names 150 Suno tracks drawn from 137 SOCAN-represented songs and calls them "just the tip of the iceberg."
- 03 Sept
03 SeptA new report says the indies' best shot at AI licensing is open right now, and closing
- Research firm Stvdio and Secretly Distribution published Independent Music 2026, a 36-page report on the independent sector's infrastructure.
- Independent music now accounts for 46.7% of global recorded music revenue, 35% of streaming consumption and 40% of album sales.
- The report says major labels and private equity have bought up the distribution layer, naming Universal's $775 million Downtown deal and DistroKid's reported $2 billion sale to CVC Capital.
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- 02 Sept
02 SeptGerencia 360 says Suno copied its catalog to win the Spanish-language AI market
- Gerencia 360 Music filed against Suno and Bright Data on August 31, 2026 in the Northern District of California, as case 3:26-cv-09248.
- The complaint alleges Suno copied its Spanish-language works to "quickly capture a significant share of the Spanish language AI user market."
- It puts 444 registered works at $66.6 million against Suno, and asks for the same sum from Bright Data on a contributory infringement count.
- 02 Sept
02 SeptJason Isbell and David Lowery sue Suno over identity, and the complaint has no copyright claim
- Jason Isbell, David Lowery, Guy Forsyth and Eduardo Calle filed a proposed class action against Suno in Boston federal court on August 31, 2026.
- The 84-page complaint spreads its claims across 17 counts and contains no copyright claim at all.
- It relies on the Illinois Right of Publicity Act, California's common-law publicity right, and the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act.
- 02 Sept
02 SeptMary J. Blige appears in a Suno ad, and the multimillion-dollar deal claim traces to one X post
- A Suno ad featuring Mary J. Blige began circulating on August 30, 2026 and ran as a promoted spot on TikTok.
- The clip is staged as candid studio footage, with Blige hearing an AI-generated track and calling it "pretty dope."
- Claims that Blige signed a multimillion-dollar deal with Suno trace back to a single X post, and no outlet has confirmed them.
- 01 Sept
01 SeptSpam farms hijacked jazz legends' streaming profiles to release AI tracks
- AI-generated tracks were uploaded to the Spotify, Amazon Music and YouTube profiles of jazz musicians including William "Sonny" Criss, Red Nichols and Jimmie Noone.
- Criss died in 1977 and Noone died in 1944, yet both had new singles appear on their profiles this year.
- The uploads were credited to a publisher named "Ami bacuk" and, on the Criss tracks, a composer named "Zainul Irpan."
- 01 Sept
01 SeptUdio admits it pulled training data with yt-dlp, then argues that's fair use
- Udio filed its formal answer to Sony Music's second copyright lawsuit, which asserted 30,117 sound recordings in July 2026.
- The answer acknowledges Udio acquired some of its training data using yt-dlp, an open-source tool that downloads audio from YouTube.
- Udio already admitted scraping YouTube audio in April 2026, answering Sony's amended complaint in the original case. The new filing names the tool.