Sony Music Entertainment has hauled AI music startup Udio back into court, filing a fresh copyright lawsuit in Manhattan that accuses the company of copying more than 30,000 recordings to train its generative music models. The complaint says Udio scraped audio from online sources and can churn out tracks that closely resemble copyrighted recordings by major artists.
The new suit landed on July 20 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, with Sony joined by nine affiliated labels. It targets 30,117 sound recordings and is docketed as Case No. 1:26‑cv‑6120, according to the court filing. Plaintiffs say they used Audible Magic fingerprinting and other forensic tools to match a far larger batch of Sony recordings embedded in Udio’s training data, and claim many files were pulled by “stream ripping” from YouTube.
What Sony says
The complaint highlights a roster of 30,117 works, pointing to examples that range from Alicia Keys to Dolly Parton and Elvis Presley. Sony argues those tracks represent only a sliver of what Udio allegedly ingested and contends that the service’s ability to output convincing imitations threatens the market for genuine recordings, according to Los Angeles Times.
Udio’s licensing deals and defense
Udio, run by parent company Uncharted Labs, has since signed licensing agreements with other major rightsholders while publicly defending its system as a model that “learns from examples.” Those business moves have left Sony as the only major label still pressing its case in court, Engadget reports.
Why the case matters
Legal observers say the lawsuit could help answer a core question in the AI era: whether training generative systems on copyrighted sound recordings without permission can ever qualify as fair use. Judges have already grappled with related anti‑circumvention questions. Bloomberg Law noted that Sony’s earlier pleadings survived a motion to dismiss and that allegations involving stream‑ripping and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti‑circumvention provisions sit at the heart of the dispute.
Legal claims and damages
The new complaint lays out three counts: federal copyright infringement for post‑1972 recordings, claims for pre‑1972 works under the Music Modernization Act, and a DMCA anti‑circumvention claim. Sony is asking for injunctive relief, attorneys’ fees and other costs, plus statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work and up to $2,500 for each alleged act of circumvention, according to the court filing.
Udio did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In prior public statements, the company has maintained that its models “learn from examples” rather than reproduce specific recordings. The new lawsuit underscores a growing divide in the music business between labels that are cutting licensing deals with AI platforms and those, like Sony, that want a judge to draw a bright legal line around how AI training can use their catalogs.
