The "wild" era of AI music is coming to an end.
Recently, there have been continuous major events in the AI music circle.
On October 20th, it was reported that AI music startup Suno is in negotiations to raise over $100 million in a funding round, which would value the company at over $2 billion, quadrupling its previous valuation. According to a recent report by Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, Suno currently generates over $100 million in annual recurring revenue.
After Udio launched a new visual editing workstation and an artist style library, Suno recently released its most powerful model to date, V5, and launched its first digital audio workstation, Suno Studio. Mati Staniszewski, co-founder and CEO of AI voice giant ElevenLabs, also confirmed that the company has received strategic investment from NVIDIA.
Just four days ago, Spotify announced plans to collaborate with the "Big Three" record labels, Merlin, and Believe to develop responsible, artist-first AI music products. All parties involved in the collaboration have endorsed the plan, stating that it respects copyrights and creators and will bring new opportunities to the industry.
Meanwhile, lawsuits against AI music companies have entered a critical stage.
Following Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement agreement with multiple authors, major record labels are clearly more emboldened to adopt more aggressive legal strategies against AI companies. Multiple music companies, including the Big Three, and independent musicians have escalated their infringement lawsuits against Suno and Udio.
On one hand, AI music generation technology has reached a new level of intensity and has further gained recognition from the capital market. On the other hand, rule-based negotiations have entered a substantive phase, and all parties are beginning to embrace AI music technology together.
The wild growth of AI music seems to be coming to an end.
The "Star Moment" of AI Music
This year, whether it's the iteration of technical routes or the lawsuits and capital actions within the industry, they constantly remind us that AI music is gradually approaching the core of the music industry.
Although the two leading companies, Suno and Udio, are deeply embroiled in copyright lawsuits led by the Big Three record labels, this long - standing legal battle has not slowed down their technological progress. Instead, the frequent launch of new tools is gradually reconstructing the underlying logic of music production.
In June this year, shortly after the release of the Styles feature and the Allegro v1.5 model update, Udio launched the visual editing tool Sessions. This update promises faster results without sacrificing quality. Creators can move, expand, or replace different parts of a song, such as verses, choruses, or bridges. It achieves this by automatically identifying these parts from the waveform, enabling a smoother and more natural editing process.
This means that AI music is no longer just about generating a song in a one - time, blind - box fashion. Instead, it can enter a process of cyclic modification and recombination.
In the same month, Suno acquired the AI audio workstation WavTool. In September this year, it successively launched the V5 model and its self - developed digital audio workstation (DAW), Suno Studio.
The update to Suno V5 brings a "leap in sound quality" and offers natural and realistic music with unprecedented creative control. Suno Studio includes the function of generating music elements (such as drums, vocals, and synthesizers) that match existing audio tracks. Users can control parameters such as BPM, volume, and pitch.
The traditional DAW logic involves humans defining the structure, loading sound sources, editing MIDI, and adjusting effects processors. Suno Studio completely subverts this technical creative paradigm. Instead of loading sound sources, the tracks carry AI - generated or voice - recorded content. Without the need for arrangement, sampling, or music theory knowledge, users only need to "select - input - play," and the AI can automatically complete musical segments based on tonality, BPM, and mood.
Even more boldly, users can simply hum a melody in their minds, and the AI can turn it into a real instrumental performance. This almost eliminates the technical threshold and completely unleashes everyone's creative potential.
It can be said that the updates from Suno and Udio this year have completely solved the problems of AI music being editable, realistic, and having controllable details. They have truly integrated AI music into the workflow, shifting the focus of music creation from cumbersome technical execution to pure creative decision - making and aesthetic control.
While Suno and Udio are constantly raising the bar through technological iterations, AI voice giant ElevenLabs has entered the fray with its AI music product, Eleven Music. Domestically, Qwan Technology has launched the first domestic conversational music - creating agent, "Tunee," and started a global public beta.
Take Eleven Music as an example. Different from the "realism + control" emphasized by Suno and Udio, Eleven Music follows a minimalist approach. Its main interface has only one input box with almost no complex options, and the operation is completely conversational. This design significantly reduces the threshold for beginners while still providing segmented style control capabilities.
Like Suno, it supports the secondary prompt function, allowing users to clearly exclude certain unwanted styles, making the generated results more directional and controllable.
Although Eleven Music currently lags behind Suno and Udio in terms of sound quality and overall maturity, it's worth noting that Eleven Music has reached licensing agreements with independent music organization Merlin and copyright holder Kobalt and has received strategic investment from NVIDIA, completing a key layout in the industry landscape first.
In other words, ElevenLabs may not necessarily aim to develop the most powerful generation model, but it is very likely to become the first truly legal and commercially viable AI music platform by virtue of its compliance.
In 2025, this year may be written into the history of AI music development. From a creative tool to a productivity engine, AI music is no longer just a toy for enthusiasts. It has taken center stage in the reconstructed music industry.
Is the Wild Growth of AI Music Coming to an End?
As AI music development enters the fast lane, technological breakthroughs are no longer the only focus of the industry. It's time to fine - tune the rules of the game.
In September this year, there was a landmark turning point in the AI copyright dispute. Multiple pieces of evidence show that when training its model Claude, Anthropic downloaded 5 million to 7 million copyrighted books from well - known pirate platforms such as Library Genesis (LibGen) and Z - Library.
In a June ruling, the US court clearly distinguished between legal and illegal data sources. Scanning a purchased paper book into a digital copy for internal research purposes is considered "fair use" under US copyright law. However, downloading and permanently storing books from pirate websites without authorization, which disrupts the copyright market order, is considered an infringement.
Therefore, when the three pieces of evidence - pirate source, model infringement, and legal definition - form a closed loop, Anthropic found itself in a losing situation. In September this year, it reached a $1.5 billion settlement agreement with a group of authors, setting a new record for copyright disputes in the AI field. Copyright compliance has become an in - your - face issue.
As the aftermath of the Anthropic case spreads, the Big Three record labels and independent musicians launched an upgraded offensive in September against the lawsuits they filed against AI music platforms Suno and Udio in June last year.
In the lawsuit against Suno, multiple copyright holders, including the Big Three record labels, and independent musicians clearly pointed out that Suno deliberately circumvented the technical protection measures set by YouTube for "stream - ripped" content. It illegally downloaded and copied copyrighted music works from the Big Three record labels and ultimately used these infringing materials to train its AI music generation model.
Even more impactful, a piece of "self - incriminating" evidence that is extremely unfavorable to Suno has surfaced.
Antonio Rodriguez, an early investor in Suno and a partner at Matrix Partners, said bluntly in an exclusive interview with Rolling Stone magazine, "If the company had reached an agreement with the record labels from the start, I might not have invested. I think they needed to build the product without constraints." These remarks almost directly confirm Suno's intentional circumvention of copyright issues, indicating its disregard for copyright rules.
Similarly, the lawsuit against Udio has also been upgraded both legally and in terms of the evidence chain. Against the backdrop of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), it is accused of deliberately breaking technical protection measures to obtain copyrighted music materials.
The technical test results of the Udio platform by record labels have revealed a shocking fact: there are melody segments in the music works generated by the platform that are highly similar to classic hit songs.
From The Temptations' "My Girl" to Green Day's "American Idiot" and Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You," these unauthorized music elements have been quietly replicated by the AI model into new works, constituting clear evidence of infringement.
A secret investigation by the International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP) has also revealed the fact that Udio and Suno illegally scraped copyrighted music from YouTube, further increasing the platforms' legal risks.
Today, the interaction between the commercialization process of AI music and the pressure of copyright compliance has become increasingly complex and close. Its key direction is spreading from the technical and business levels to the legal and moral aspects, becoming an unavoidable core issue.
AI music companies attract the market with their low - cost and efficient creative models. However, their core advantage often lies in the "free" use of a large number of existing copyrighted works. As commercialization deepens, especially after the technology matures, the once - technological advantage has become a compliance dead - end.
In this context, record labels and platform operators are no longer passive responders. The industry's regulatory forces are beginning to mobilize on a larger scale, and platform operators are also increasing their regulatory efforts. However, although the lawsuits are ongoing, the Financial Times reported earlier this month that Universal Music and Warner Music have reached licensing agreements with AI music companies, including Suno. Bloomberg reported in June that these negotiations include discussions on licensing fees and equity shares for Suno and its peer, Udio.
In addition to the previously reported new policies launched by Deezer and ROKK, which include measures to remove junk AI tracks, Spotify also revealed at a press conference in September this year that it has removed over 75 million "junk tracks" in the past year.
Furthermore, Spotify has announced three new policies, which will strengthen the crackdown on counterfeiting and violations, launch a new junk - content filtering system, and require music that meets industry - standard production information to provide disclosure of AI usage. On one hand, it aims to combat AI - assisted fraud; on the other hand, it supports artists' legal use of AI tools for creation.
As mentioned earlier, Spotify is also collaborating with the Big Three record labels, independent music representative organization Merlin, and digital music distribution company Believe to plan the development of more rule - compliant AI music products.
Although the current conflicts surrounding AI music are extremely intense, technological development must ultimately be integrated into the existing legal and industrial frameworks. When platforms, capital, and the law jointly bring the wildly growing technology onto a regulated track, a new industry balance begins to form.