Photo Credit: Sir Lucian Grainge UMG by Luke Harold (Public Domain)
It’s official: UMG and AI firm Udio have announced an industry-first agreement to collaborate on a new opt-in streaming platform.
Universal Music Group (UMG) and AI-powered music creation platform Udio have announced an industry-first strategic agreement under which their copyright infringement litigation will be settled. But the deal also sees the two companies collaborate on a new commercial music creation, consumption, and streaming experience, slated for release next year.
In addition to the compensatory legal settlement, the new license agreements for recorded music and publishing will provide further revenue opportunities for UMG artists and songwriters.
The new platform will be powered by new generative-AI technology that will be trained on authorized and licensed music. Further, the new subscription service will “transform the user engagement experience, creating a licensed and protected environment to customize, stream, and share music responsibly” on the Udio platform.
“We couldn’t be more thrilled about this collaboration and the opportunity to work alongside UMG to redefine how AI empowers artists and fans,” said Andrew Sanchez, Co-Founder & CEO of Udio. “This moment brings to life everything we’ve been building toward—uniting AI and the music industry in a way that truly champions artists. Together, we’re building the technological and business landscape that will fundamentally expand what’s possible in music creation and engagement.”
“These new agreements with Udio demonstrate our commitment to do what’s right by our artists and songwriters, whether that means embracing new technologies, developing new business models, diversifying revenue streams, or beyond,” said Sir Lucian Grainge, Chairman and CEO of UMG. “We look forward to working with Andrew who shares our belief that together, we can foster a healthy commercial AI ecosystem in which artists, songwriters, music companies, and technology companies can all flourish and create incredible experiences for fans.”
Udio’s existing product will remain available to users during the transition period, with creations controlled within a walled garden and the service amended in multiple ways. These include fingerprinting, filtering, and other measures ahead of the launch of the updated service.
UMG is the first company to enter into AI-related agreements with YouTube, TikTok, Meta, KDDI, KLAY Vision, BandLab, Soundlabs, and Pro-Rata, among others. The agreement with Udio marks a significant chapter in the ongoing rise of AI and subsequent battle between technology companies and rightsholders.
The arrangement comes at a pivotal moment, as part of a settlement in a massive dispute in which UMG—the world’s largest record company—accused the AI company of copyright infringement. Alongside the other two largest labels, Sony and Warner, UMG sued Udio and another AI music platform, Suno, last year.
That lawsuit accused the two startups of using copyrighted music scraped from the internet to train their generative AI models, enabling users to compose songs using text prompts.
Although details of the financial terms of the settlement with Udio haven’t been disclosed, UMG’s roster includes some of the world’s biggest artists, like Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar.
Notably, artists will be able to opt into the new service, and those who opt in will be paid for music used for training the model, says Michael Nash, Universal Music Group Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Officer. Artists will also be compensated when songs are used by subscribers to create new songs.
