It feels like the Napster days are back as the RIAA gears up to sue AI music companies Udio and Suno. Interestingly, these companies have countered the allegations by claiming fair use of copyrighted data.

“We train our models on medium- and high-quality music found on the open internet… Much of this indeed contains copyrighted materials, some of which are owned by major record labels,” says Shulman. He firmly believes that “Learning is not infringing. It never has been, and it is not now.”

The RIAA has substantial reasons to pursue this case, especially as signs emerge of a slowdown in music streaming (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-08-04/is-the-music-industry-slowdown-a-crisis-or-a-blip), with some analysts suggesting the industry may have peaked. This could prompt the organization to aggressively seek new revenue streams through litigation.

AI music startup Suno claims training model on copyrighted music is ‘fair use’ | TechCrunch

Following the recent lawsuit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) against music generation startups Udio and Suno, Suno admitted Suno admitted that it trained its AI model using copyrighted music but doing so was legal under the fair-use doctrine.