Eight Mile Style, the Ferndale company that controls the rights to nearly 270 Eminem songs, filed a copyright lawsuit against AI music platform Suno late Friday night, accusing the company of training its model on Eminem's catalog without permission. The publisher is seeking more than $41 million in damages.
The lawsuit was filed in San Francisco federal court on Nov. 6, according to the Detroit Free Press. As reported by Yahoo News, the complaint alleges that Suno made illicit copies of millions of copyrighted musical works, including Eight Mile Style's songs, without compensating rights holders.
The damages figure breaks down into two parts. Eight Mile Style claims it is entitled to $150,000 for each of the 269 Eminem songs it controls, totaling $40.4 million, plus an additional $672,000 tied to alleged removal of digital copyright information, per the same report. Eight Mile Style owns and administers rights to nearly 270 Eminem compositions overall, including “Lose Yourself” and “Stan.”
A Song That Allegedly Sounds Like Eminem
Central to the complaint is a specific Suno-generated track the publisher calls “Slim shady x Rosefalls.” Eight Mile Style contends the song's vocals are “clearly derived from Eminem's actual voice,” the report notes, pointing to it as evidence the AI model absorbed and reproduced elements of the rapper's distinct style rather than generating something original.
The case lands amid what the Free Press frames as part of a growing flurry of litigation aimed at Suno by music industry heavyweights. Eight Mile Style is not new to this kind of fight — the publisher previously sued Meta, alleging that 243 of its musical compositions, including “Lose Yourself,” “The Real Slim Shady” and “Forgot About Dre,” were distributed across Meta's platforms without proper licenses, according to Rolling Stone.
Suno Faces a Widening Legal Front
The Eight Mile Style suit is the latest in a string of copyright actions against Suno that stretches back years. The Recording Industry Association of America announced copyright cases against Suno and rival Udio in June 2024, alleging the companies trained their AI models on copyrighted recordings without permission, according to NPR.
More recently, independent publisher Reservoir filed federal lawsuits against both Suno and Anthropic on Oct. 21, alleging its copyrighted songs were used to train AI models, Billboard reported. That complaint alone claims infringement of 1,050 compositions, with damages pleaded across three counts totaling just over $186 million, according to Music Business Worldwide.
Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment filed a second lawsuit against Suno in September, accusing the company's v6 model of copying 60,202 sound recordings without a license, the same outlet reported. Round Hill Music separately sued Suno in August, seeking damages that could exceed $1 billion, according to Forbes. In September, a group of musicians including Jason Isbell filed a class action against Suno in Massachusetts.
Licensing Deals Complicate the Picture
Not every rights holder is suing. Suno reached a settlement with Warner Music Group that ended its case against the AI firm, and has since struck similar licensing deals with BMG and Believe, according to Billboard's reporting. The company has released AI models built with licensed music from those three partners even as other lawsuits over its training practices continue, per the Los Angeles Times.
Still, key details about those arrangements remain undisclosed. The Los Angeles Times reported that none of the licensing companies have revealed what artists will actually be paid or how many artists have opted into the deals. The New York Times has described the music industry's feelings toward AI tools like Suno as decidedly mixed, caught between fear of unauthorized use and interest in monetizing the technology.
For Eight Mile Style, the Ferndale-based gatekeeper of one of hip-hop's most valuable catalogs, the new filing adds another front to its ongoing effort to control how Eminem's music and voice are used across emerging technology platforms.
