Sony Music Entertainment has filed a second copyright infringement lawsuit against Udio, asserting 30,117 sound recordings it says the AI music company copied without permission to train its generative AI models.
The complaint, obtained and first reported by MBW, was filed on Monday (July 20) in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. You can read it in full here.
It follows a June 29 ruling in which the same court denied Sony‘s bid to add more than 30,000 of those recordings to its existing case against Udio.
The suit is brought by Sony Music Entertainment alongside nine affiliated labels, including Arista Records, LaFace, and others.
Sony and its subsidiaries first sued Udio in June 2024, in litigation coordinated by the RIAA on behalf of the major labels.
Discovery in that original case allowed Sony to inspect Udio’s training data and identify hundreds of thousands of its recordings using audio fingerprinting, according to the new complaint.
The 30,117 works asserted in the new suit are a subset of those matches, which the labels describe as “only a small portion” of the recordings Udio infringed.
In its June 29 ruling, the court denied Sony leave to add the recordings to the original case but recognized that “Plaintiffs have the right to seek to stop infringement of, and recover damages for, all copyrighted works.”
The court held only that “there is no requirement that it be done in [that] lawsuit,” language Sony cites as the basis for filing the new action.
“Udio’s belated embrace of licensing only underscores the unlawfulness of its decision to copy Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings, without a license, in the first place.”
Sony Music complaint against Udio
In answering the original complaint, Udio admitted that its models were “constructed by showing the program a vast amount of different kinds of sound recordings,” and that those recordings “presumably included recordings whose rights are owned by the Plaintiffs in this case.”
The new complaint also carries claims that Udio obtained many of the recordings by “stream ripping” them from YouTube using the tool YT-DLP, circumventing the platform’s technological protections.
Udio has acknowledged obtaining audio data from YouTube for use as training data, while arguing that its use of copyrighted music amounts to fair use.
Since launching, Udio has struck licensing deals with rightsholders including Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Merlin, Kobalt, Believe and the National Music Publishers’ Association, according to the complaint.
Sony is the only major music company yet to reach a licensing agreement with Udio, having declined to settle where Universal and Warner did.
The complaint argues that Udio’s “belated embrace of licensing” underscores what the labels call the unlawfulness of copying their recordings without a license “in the first place.”
The suit brings three claims: infringement of post-1972 recordings, infringement of pre-1972 recordings protected under the Music Modernization Act, and circumvention of technological measures under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Sony is seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work infringed, plus up to $2,500 for each act of circumvention, along with an injunction.
Udio, developed by Uncharted Labs, was founded by former Google DeepMind researchers and launched its service in April 2024, and is led by co-founder and CEO Andrew Sanchez.
The complaint frames Udio’s conduct as “a mad dash to become the dominant AI music generation service,” stating the company has “flouted the rights of copyright owners in the music industry” since the day it launched.
Udio’s rival Suno continues to face parallel copyright infringement claims from Universal Music Group and Sony Music in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
Warner Music Group, a former co-plaintiff, exited that case after settling with Suno in November 2025, leaving Universal and Sony as the remaining major-label plaintiffs.
In the Suno case, Universal and Sony are seeking to add 61,026 recordings, more than double the 30,117 at issue in the Udio complaint.Music Business Worldwide
Sony Music Entertainment has initiated a second copyright infringement lawsuit against Udio, an AI music company, alleging the unauthorized use of 30,117 sound recordings for training its generative AI models. This lawsuit, filed on July 20, 2024, in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, comes after a prior ruling on June 29 that denied Sony’s attempt to include these recordings in an existing case against Udio. The lawsuit is supported by nine affiliated labels, including Arista Records and LaFace, and follows an earlier lawsuit from June 2024, coordinated by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
The recent complaint arises from findings during discovery in the original case, where Sony was able to analyze Udio’s training data and identify hundreds of thousands of their recordings using audio fingerprinting technology. The 30,117 sound recordings mentioned in the new lawsuit are described by Sony as “only a small portion” of the total infringements. Although the court previously denied adding these recordings to the existing lawsuit, it recognized Sony’s right to seek redress for all infringed works, stating that there is no requirement for such actions to be consolidated into one lawsuit.
Udio has admitted to constructing its AI models using a vast array of sound recordings, which likely included those owned by Sony and its affiliated labels. The complaint also accuses Udio of obtaining many recordings through “stream ripping” from YouTube using a tool called YT-DLP, which bypasses certain technological protections. Udio has acknowledged using audio data from YouTube but contends that its use qualifies as fair use.
Since its launch, Udio has established licensing agreements with several rightsholders, including Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, but has not struck a deal with Sony, which has opted not to settle like its competitors. The lawsuit argues that Udio’s recent efforts to secure licenses only highlight the initial unlawfulness of its actions in copying copyrighted recordings without permission.
The lawsuit presents three claims: infringement of post-1972 recordings, infringement of pre-1972 recordings under the Music Modernization Act, and circumvention of technological measures as outlined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Sony seeks statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each infringed work and $2,500 for each act of circumvention, as well as an injunction to prevent further violations.
Udio, developed by Uncharted Labs and founded by former Google DeepMind researchers, launched its service in April 2024, with Andrew Sanchez as its CEO. The complaint characterizes Udio’s actions as a reckless pursuit of dominance in the AI music generation space, accusing the company of disregarding copyright owners’ rights since its inception.
In a related matter, Udio’s competitor, Suno, is facing copyright infringement claims from both Universal Music Group and Sony Music in a different lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Warner Music Group, a previous co-plaintiff in that case, has since settled with Suno. Universal and Sony continue to pursue claims in that case and are seeking to add over 61,000 recordings, significantly more than the 30,117 recordings involved in the Udio lawsuit.
This ongoing legal battle underscores the complexities and challenges at the intersection of music copyright and emerging AI technologies, as major labels seek to protect their intellectual property rights in an evolving digital landscape.
