The Deal Before Choice

Matt Evans, 35, is a session brass player in Pasadena. His concern is narrow and specific: a performance he recorded once can be reused somewhere he never agreed to. He told the Los Angeles Times, "if that's not negotiated in a contract, then I never got to make a choice to receive additional compensation."

That reuse now has a market. Major record labels are licensing their music to AI companies, including Suno and Udio, the platforms they sued in 2024. Suno, valued at $5.4 billion, has released its first models built with licensed music from Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe. As of the Times report on Sept. 21, 2026, none of the companies had disclosed what artists will be paid or how many artists have opted in.

The deals are signed at the label level. The choice is supposed to sit with the artist. Whether those two things line up is the question for anyone whose work is in a catalog.

On paper, BMG's terms are the clearest. Billboard reported that under the BMG and Suno deal, BMG artists and songwriters must opt in before their music can be used for training, meaning the material a model learns from, or for derivative works made by Suno users. Artists who opt in will be compensated. The same deal settles Suno's prior use of BMG's recordings and publishing works.

Who decides is less clear. Jack Brody, Suno's chief product officer, told the Times that labels "ultimately have their contracts in place that will have some say in what an artist can and can't do." Drew Silverstein, senior advisor for AI at BandLab Technologies, put the distinction more plainly: "A label making a deal and an individual artist having a choice are not necessarily the same thing." The Times also reported that it is not always clear whether opting out keeps an artist's recordings out of AI training, or only out of fan-facing features. Those are two very different defaults.

The two platforms also handle output differently. Udio's model, which the Times said Universal favors, keeps songs inside the platform. Suno lets users download what they make and release it elsewhere, with download caps and watermarks meant to curb abuse.

The lawsuits did not all end. Some of them got company. In June, the American Federation of Musicians sued Universal and Warner. The union alleges the labels licensed recordings its members played on to Suno and Udio without paying those musicians or telling the union which recordings were involved. The labels have moved to dismiss the case. Sony and Universal filed a new suit alleging that Suno's latest model still infringes their copyrighted works. In July, a Munich court ruled against Suno in a case brought by GEMA, which collects royalties for German songwriters and publishers. Separately, Jason Isbell and other musicians have filed a proposed class action alleging that Suno lets users generate songs that evoke specific artists' identities without their consent; Suno disputes those claims.

Visual artists face a version of the same question, written into terms of service. Midjourney's terms, in the version effective May 27, 2026, grant Midjourney a perpetual, irrevocable, sublicensable copyright license to users' inputs and outputs. By default, users' content is publicly viewable and remixable. Stealth mode, which changes that, is tied to the Pro and Mega plans.

The other side of that license is ownership. In 2022, the U.S. Copyright Office rejected computer scientist Stephen Thaler's request to copyright his AI-generated image "A Recent Entrance to Paradise." Futurism, citing Reuters, reported that the Supreme Court has declined to hear the dispute. That suggests ownership of a purely machine-made image may amount to less than the word implies.

Some reference points on price do exist outside music. Anthropic's settlement with authors was at least $1.5 billion, roughly $3,000 for each pirated book copy at issue. An article on Chambers.com described it as a first benchmark for royalty levels. In the UK government's consultation on AI and copyright, 88% of more than 11,500 responses favored requiring a license to train AI on copyrighted works.

For musicians, no comparable figure is public. What a player like Evans will be paid, and whether opting out means out of training, has not been said. The license exists. So does the opt-in, on paper.

“A label making a deal and an individual artist having a choice are not necessarily the same thing.”

1. Suno made a new AI music model with major labels. Here's what it means (Los Angeles Times)
2. Suno and BMG Reach Licensing Deal for AI Music Model (Billboard)
3. The Supreme Court Just Dealt a Crushing Blow to "AI Artists" (Futurism)
4. Midjourney Terms of Service
5. Copyright and AI remain in focus for 2026, with Getty appeal given the green light (Chambers)