Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment filed a second lawsuit against Suno on September 18, accusing the AI music platform of copying over 60,000 copyrighted sound recordings without permission and using them to train models that power its music generation service. The new complaint targets Suno's v6 model suite, launched just days earlier on September 9, arguing that even though Suno claims v6 was built from scratch, it still carries the legal liability of its predecessors.

What Makes This Second Lawsuit Different From the First?

The first case, filed in June 2024, covered 560 works. In August 2026, a federal judge refused to let the labels add 61,026 more recordings to that original suit, ruling it would delay the case. That decision opened the door for this second filing, which now focuses specifically on 60,202 sound recordings the labels say they identified using audio fingerprinting technology during discovery in the first case.

The core allegation is novel: Universal and Sony argue that Suno's v6 model is tainted by its connection to earlier, infringing models. "Training a 'new' model on the outputs of an infringing model does not eliminate the infringement; it launders it, passing the value of Plaintiffs' expression from the copied recordings into the tainted models, from those models into their outputs, and from those outputs into v6," the complaint states.

How Did Suno Build v6, and Why Does It Matter?

Suno's Chief Product Officer Jack Brody told Music Business Worldwide at v6's launch that the model "was trained entirely from scratch, from the ground up," using data that "doesn't include data from Universal or Sony." The company also announced partnerships with Warner Music Group, BMG, and Believe to build v6.

But the labels argue that Suno's training methods still constitute infringement. According to the complaint, Suno used three techniques that all trace back to earlier, unlicensed models:

• User Preference Data: Suno trained v6 using "user interactions" with previous models, which means it learned from data about which of two AI-generated tracks users preferred, all derived from outputs of infringing earlier versions.
• Knowledge Distillation: Suno used a process where a new "student" model learns from a "teacher" model's behavior, meaning v6 inherited capabilities like composing, arranging, and imitating music styles that came directly from models trained on unlicensed recordings.
• Accumulated Learnings: The complaint alleges that v6's training corpus "in substance, embodies the accumulated learnings of models built on Plaintiffs' works," including versions v4, v4.5, v5, and all intermediate releases.

The labels also point out that Suno has never disclosed destroying the 60,202 recordings it copied, meaning the company continues to hold and exploit those works.

What Are the Financial Stakes?

Under US copyright law, willful infringement can carry damages of up to $150,000 per work. Applied to the 60,202 recordings in this suit, that would total just over $9 billion at the maximum ceiling. The labels are also seeking up to $2,500 for each instance of circumventing YouTube's anti-downloading technology, which would add roughly $150 million if applied to each recording.

Universal and Sony are also demanding a court order to stop Suno from using their recordings and have requested a jury trial.

Why Does Suno's Deal With Other Labels Strengthen the Lawsuit?

The complaint turns Suno's own licensing agreements against it. The company settled with Warner Music Group in November 2025, signed BMG on August 12, and announced a partnership with Believe on September 8. "Three agreements with three major rightsholders in less than a year confirm that a functioning market exists for licensing sound recordings to train generative AI models and that Suno itself recognizes that using copyrighted sound recordings for this purpose requires permission," the filing states.

This matters because Suno's primary legal defense is that training on copyrighted material qualifies as "fair use." One key factor courts weigh in fair use cases is whether the practice harms the market for the original works. By showing that Suno negotiated licenses with other major labels, the complaint suggests the company knew it needed permission and that a licensing market exists.

What Evidence of Market Harm Do the Labels Present?

The complaint cites data from streaming platform Deezer, which reported in July 2026 that more than half of new tracks arriving on its platform each day were AI-generated, totaling around 90,000 tracks daily. "Every machine-generated track delivered to a streaming service competes with the Copyrighted Recordings for placement, for discovery, for finite listener attention, and for a share of the fixed royalty pools from which genuine artists and rightsholders are paid," the filing argues.

The labels describe this as "dilution at this scale and velocity" that is "not just a future harm; it is a present, measured, and accelerating one".

What Broader Concerns Do Universal and Sony Raise?

Beyond financial damages, the complaint emphasizes the threat to the entire music ecosystem. "Suno's wholesale theft of the Copyrighted Recordings threatens the entire music ecosystem and the numerous people it employs. It also degrades the rights of artists to control their works, determine whether future uses of their works align with their aesthetic and personal values, and decide the products or services with which they wish to be associated," the complaint states.

The filing also quotes Suno co-founder and CEO Mikey Shulman saying that "it's not really enjoyable to make music now...it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software." The labels argue that this statement actually underscores why copyright protection matters: "The time, practice, and skill Mr. Shulman derides are exactly what copyright law exists to encourage and reward, and exactly what spurred the creation of the Copyrighted Recordings Suno copied and ingested into its AI models," the complaint reads.

What Happens Next?

This second case will proceed separately from the original June 2024 lawsuit. The first case remains focused on the fair use question for Suno's earlier models, while this new filing targets the specific allegation that v6 perpetuates infringement through derivative training methods. Both cases will ultimately test whether US copyright law can address the complex question of whether training a new model on outputs of an infringing model constitutes a fresh infringement or merely inherits the original violation.