Artist coalition urges music community to reject Suno AI platform

The letter, titled Say No to Suno, was published on 23 February on the Music Technology Policy blog. It describes the company as a “brazen smash and grab” platform and alleges it relies on “unauthorised AI platform machinery trained on human artists’ work”.

Signatories include Ron Gubitz, executive director of the Music Artist Coalition; Helienne Lindvall, president of the European Composer and Songwriter Alliance; and Chris Castle of the Artist Rights Institute. Other supporters include artists David C. Lowery and Tift Merritt, as well as Blake Morgan, president of ECR Music Group, and Abby North, president of North Music Group.

Ongoing legal disputes

The letter comes as Suno faces copyright infringement lawsuits from major music companies and rights organisations. In mid-2024, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed suit against Suno and rival Udio on behalf of the three major labels, alleging “mass infringement” of copyright.

Udio has since reached licensing settlements with Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group for a new AI music platform expected to launch this year.

Warner Music Group also settled separately with Suno in November. However, Suno remains in legal disputes with Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, as well as European rights bodies including Koda and GEMA.

The open letter argues that unauthorised generative AI platforms differ fundamentally from previous technological changes in the music industry. It states that the “hijacking of the world’s entire treasure-trove of music floods platforms with AI slop and dilutes the royalty pools of legitimate artists from whose music this slop is derived”.

The intervention follows a sharp rise in AI-generated music uploads. According to data released by Deezer, around 60,000 AI-generated tracks are uploaded to its platform each day, representing approximately 39% of daily deliveries. Deezer reported that up to 85% of streams of AI-generated tracks in 2025 were fraudulent, compared with 8% fraud across its overall catalogue. Fraudulent streams are removed from royalty calculations.

AI-generated music accounts for up to 3% of total streams on Deezer, but the company has stated that generating fake streams appears to be the primary motivation for uploading such content.

‘Walled Garden’ model

The letter also addresses the debate over so-called “walled gardens” in AI music services. It criticises comments by Suno chief music officer Paul Sinclair, who argued in a LinkedIn post titled “Open Studios, not walled gardens” that closed systems restrict how audiences engage with music.

Universal Music Group introduced the “walled garden” concept in its agreement with Udio, under which AI-generated tracks cannot be downloaded or distributed outside the platform. Udio disabled downloads, providing users with a limited period to retrieve existing files. Warner Music Group implemented similar measures in its own Udio settlement.

When Warner later reached a separate agreement with Suno, the platform retained features allowing users to create and download songs.

In his annual memo to staff, UMG chairman and CEO Sir Lucian Grainge warned against “validating business models that fail to respect artists’ work and creativity, and promote the exponential growth of AI slop on streaming platforms”.

Michael Nash, executive vice president and chief digital officer at UMG, elaborated on the company’s position during an appearance on Billboard’s On The Record podcast. “The concept [of a walled garden] is to set up through AI a component of the service for deep interaction with the artists and the content, but not to create derivatives that you then take off of the platform and post all over your socials and post on Spotify and Amazon Music, and Apple,” he said.

He added that such practices “effectively use artists’ content and their brand to create derivatives where you’re going to compete with the artist on other platforms”.

Industry context

Suno has recruited several senior music industry executives in recent months, including former Merlin CEO Jeremy Sirota as Chief Commercial Officer and former Spotify executive Sam Berger as Senior Director of Artist Partnerships.

In November, the company closed a $250 million Series C funding round at a reported $2.45 billion valuation. According to reports, Suno generates approximately $200 million in annual revenue, primarily through subscriptions.

The publication of the open letter adds to mounting industry debate over the role of generative AI in music creation, licensing and distribution, as legal and commercial negotiations between technology companies and rights holders continue.

Read artist coalition’s open letter in full below:

Late last year, thieves disguised as construction workers broke into the Louvre during broad daylight, grabbed more than $100 million worth of crown jewels, and roared off on their motorbikes into the busy streets of Paris. While some of those thieves were later arrested, the jewelry they stole has yet to be recovered, and many fear those historic works of artistry have already been recut, reset, and resold.

Closer to home, but no less nefarious, is the brazen rip-off of artists enabled by irresponsible AI, whose profiteers are recutting, remixing, and reselling original works of artistry as something new.  The hijacking of the world’s entire treasure-trove of music floods platforms with AI slop and dilutes the royalty pools of legitimate artists from whose music this slop is derived.

Meanwhile, those who are promoting this new business model are operating in broad daylight, too – minus the yellow safety vests.  That is AI music company Suno, the brazen “smash and grab” platform whose “Make it Music” ad campaign suggests that the most personal and meaningful forms of music can now be fabricated by their unauthorized AI platform machinery trained on human artists’ work.

How significant is this activity?  Publicly revealed data says Suno is used to generate 7 million tracks a day, a massive quantity that suggests a dominant market share of AI tracks.  According to recent reports, Deezer “deems 85% of streams of fully AI-generated tracks [on its service] to be fraudulent,” and that such tracks include outputs from major generative models.  As JP Morgan’s analysts said, Deezer’s data “should be indicative of the broader market.”  Suno has yet to demonstrate persuasively that its platform does not, in practice, serve as a scalable input into streaming-fraud schemes — raising a serious concern that Suno has, in effect, become a fraud-fodder factory on an industrial scale.

In a February 2 LinkedIn post, Paul Sinclair, Suno’s Chief Music Officer, claims that his company’s platform is about “empowerment” that enables “billions of fans to create and play with music.”  He argues that closed systems are “walled gardens” that deny people access to the full joy of music.

Ironically, Sinclair’s choice of analogy undermines his own argument.  Ask yourself: just why are most gardens surrounded by fences or walls?  To keep out rabbits, deer, raccoons and wild pigs seeking a free lunch.  We cultivate, nurture and protect our gardens precisely because that makes them much more productive over the long run.

While Sinclair may be loath to admit it, AI is fundamentally different from past disruptive innovations in the music industry.  The phonograph, cassettes, CDs, MP3s, downloads, streaming – all these technologies were about the reproduction and distribution of creative work.  By contrast, irresponsible AI like Suno appropriates and plunders such creative work while undermining the commercial ecosystem for artists.

Think back to the days of Napster.  What brought the music industry back from the ruinous abyss of unfettered digital piracy?  It was the very “closed systems” that Sinclair derides as exclusionary.  At least streaming platforms maintain access controls and content management systems that enable creator compensation, even if the economic outcomes for many creators remain inadequate.  Should we be against Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, YouTube Music, and Amazon Music?  What about Netflix, Disney+ and HBO, too, while we’re at it?

At its core, Sinclair’s argument is just a tired remix of the old trope that “information wants to be free.”  What that really means is: “We want your music for free.”

Artists need to understand Suno’s game.  They are not putting technology in the service of artists; they are putting artists in the service of their technology.  Every time artists’ creations are used by the platform, those creations have just unwittingly been contributed to the creation of endless derivatives of artists’ own work, not to mention AI slop, with limited or no remuneration back to the human creators.  Suno built its business on our backs, scraping the world’s cultural output without permission, then competing against the very works exploited.

It’s also important to keep in mind that using Suno to generate audio output calls into question the copyrightability of whatever Suno creates.  Most countries around the world including the US Copyright Office have been clear that generative AI outputs are largely ineligible for a copyright – meaning the economic value of the Suno creation lies solely with Suno, not with the artist using it.  The only ones gaining empowerment from Suno are Suno themselves.

Many in our community are embracing responsible AI as a tool for creation, and as a means for fans to explore and interact with our artistry.  That’s wonderful.  But it’s not the same as creating an environment where AI-generated works sourced from our music are mass distributed to dilute our royalties or, worse yet, reward those actively seeking to commit fraud.  Artists need to know the difference – all AI platforms are not the same, and Suno, which is being sued for copyright infringement, is not a platform artists should trust.

Responsible AI-generated music must evolve within a framework that respects and remunerates artists, enhances human creativity rather than supplants it, and empowers fans to engage with the music they love.  At the same time, AI services must preclude mass distribution of slop and prevent fraudsters from destroying the very ecosystem that has been built to reward and sustain artists and audiences alike.

All of us, including billions of music fans, share an urgent, deep and abiding interest in protecting and rewarding human genius, even as AI continues to change our industry and the world in unimaginable ways.  So in 2026, even as the Louvre continues to revamp its own approach to security, we in the arts must rise to confront those who would “smash-and-grab” our creativity for their own benefit.

Together, while embracing innovation, we must work to establish more effective safeguards – both legal and technological – that better promote and protect all creative artists, our intellectual property, and the spark of human genius.

Say no to Suno. Say yes to the beauty and bounty of the gardens that feed us all.

Signed:

• Ron Gubitz, Executive Director, Music Artist Coalition
• Helienne Lindvall, Songwriter and President, European Composer and Songwriter Alliance
• David C. Lowery, Artist and Editor The Trichordist
• Tift Merritt artist, Practitioner in Residence, Duke University and Artist Rights Alliance Board Member
• Blake Morgan, artist, producer, and President of ECR Music Group.
• Abby North, President, North Music Group
• Chris Castle, Artist Rights Institute