Sony Music Entertainment has initiated another legal action against the artificial intelligence music generation platform Udio, alleging the unauthorized use of over 30,000 sound recordings. The lawsuit, filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, asserts that Udio copied these works to train its AI models. This filing comes after a June 29 ruling where the same court rejected Sony's bid to include these specific recordings in its ongoing litigation against Udio.
The new complaint, brought by Sony Music Entertainment and nine affiliated labels including Arista Records and LaFace, claims Udio's actions constitute copyright infringement. Sony and its subsidiaries originally sued Udio in June 2024, with the litigation coordinated by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on behalf of major labels. Discovery in that initial case allowed Sony to examine Udio's training data and identify hundreds of thousands of its recordings through audio fingerprinting. The 30,117 works cited in the new suit represent a subset of these identified infringements, which the labels describe as "only a small portion" of the total recordings Udio allegedly infringed.
In its June 29 decision, the court denied Sony's request to amend its original complaint but acknowledged the plaintiffs' right to pursue claims for all copyrighted works. The court stated there was "no requirement that it be done in [that] lawsuit," a statement Sony is now using as grounds for its new action. Udio, developed by Uncharted Labs and founded by former Google DeepMind researchers, had previously admitted in its response to the original complaint that its models were trained on "a vast amount of different kinds of sound recordings," which presumably included copyrighted material.
The current lawsuit levies three claims: infringement of sound recordings created after 1972, infringement of sound recordings predating 1972 that are protected under the Music Modernization Act, and circumvention of technological measures in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Sony is seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work, plus additional damages for the DMCA claim, alongside an injunction.
While Sony continues its legal pursuit, other major music labels have reached settlements with Udio. Universal Music Group settled with Udio in October 2025, establishing a licensing deal, and Warner Music Group followed with its own settlement in November 2025. The National Music Publishers' Association also announced an industry-wide licensing agreement in June 2026. Sony Music remains the sole major label plaintiff actively litigating against Udio.
The legal battle between Sony and Udio has seen previous judicial decisions. In April 2026, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein declined to dismiss Sony's claim that Udio circumvented YouTube's technological protections, a DMCA allegation. However, the judge noted that further factual development was needed to determine if these measures qualified as access controls under the statute. The court's denial of Sony's motion to add the extensive list of recordings in June 2026 was based on the argument that such an expansion would significantly alter the scope of the case, requiring substantial additional discovery and review.
Udio's defense has consistently included claims of fair use, arguing that its training process and output constitute transformative creation. The company has stated that its AI models were constructed by processing a large quantity of diverse sound recordings. The ongoing litigation underscores the broader tensions between established music rights holders and the rapidly developing field of generative AI music creation.