Universal asks a judge to throw out the AFM's Udio lawsuit, saying the union contract sets no AI rate

Universal Music Group has asked a New York federal court to throw out the American Federation of Musicians’ lawsuit over the recordings it licensed to Udio. The motion landed on Wednesday, August 5, in the Southern District of New York, and it runs on one line of reasoning: the union contract never set a price for AI training, so there is no unpaid bill.

Warner made a version of this argument in July. Universal has now made its own, and it is narrower and harder to answer.

What Universal told the Southern District of New York

Universal filed under Rule 12(b)(6), the provision that lets a court dismiss a claim that fails legally even when every fact in the complaint is accepted as true.

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This case should be dismissed under Rule 12(b)(6) because the parties' written agreement, the Sound Recording Labor Agreement, forecloses AFM's sole claim as a matter of law.

The contract in question is the SRLA, the collective bargaining agreement between the AFM and the signatory record companies. The AFM’s case rests on Article 21(a), the clause covering what the contract calls a new use of a recording, and the union says licensing recordings for AI training is exactly that.

Universal’s response is that the clause fixes no rate for the use of recordings to train generative AI, according to Music Business Worldwide. A clause with no number attached, on this reading, creates no payment obligation the union can enforce.

Why Universal wants this settled at the bargaining table

Alongside the filing, a UMG spokesperson pointed the argument back at the negotiating room.

“Universal Music Group has been at the forefront of protecting the rights and advancing the interests of artists and songwriters in the age of AI,” the spokesperson said, citing the company’s AI licensing agreements, its legislative push, and its suits against what it calls bad actors.

The sharper line came next. “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.”

That is the same play Warner ran when it asked Judge Edgardo Ramos for a discovery stay in July while it negotiated a fresh SRLA with the union suing it. Both majors want the AI question answered in a contract they are still writing, not in a ruling on a contract signed in March 2023.

What the AFM says the majors owe session players

The union sued Universal and Warner on June 5, alleging both companies licensed members’ recordings to AI music platforms with no compensation and no credit. Warner has a deal with Suno; both majors settled with Udio and licensed music to it.

The AFM describes itself as the largest union of professional musicians in the world. Its members are the players on the records, not the artists whose names sit on the sleeve, and those players do not get a cut of a settlement unless a contract says they do.

Full status, parties, and the running timeline live in the AFM v. Universal and Warner case tracker.