AI Music Goes Legit? How Universal Music Group Will Let You Reimagine (Some of) Its Music

Universal Music Group didn’t merely settle its lawsuit with the AI music-generating service Udio in a deal announced yesterday — the world’s largest record company is now partnering with Udio to build a new kind of AI music service. The idea, execs for both companies tell Rolling Stone, is a service that — with artists’ permission — will allow listeners to use AI to revamp well-known songs, utilize singers’ actual voices for new creations, and mash up multiple artists’ styles, among other innovations.

“The vision is that you’re gonna be able to consume and interact with your favorite songs and artists in the same place,” Udio CEO Andrew Sanchez tells Rolling Stone. “I might wanna listen to songs that are made by my favorite band, and then maybe I wanna remix one. Or, ‘I’ve been listening to this band and this other band, I’m gonna mash ’em up together and then I might listen to those new songs as well.’” Sanchez calls it “a massive expansion… a paradigm that doesn’t exist right now” — part Spotify-like service, part creator platform, part social network. “We want to build a community of superfans around creation,” he adds. “As we say internally, it’s connection through creation.”

Just over a year ago, Universal joined Sony Music and Warner Music Group in suing Udio and rival AI-music generator Suno, arguing that the companies violated copyright law by training their models on copyrighted recordings without permission (the companies argued that this constituted fair use). Now Universal and Udio are targeting 2026 for the launch of their joint platform, which will be a “walled garden” where no AI creations can be downloaded or posted outside of the site. The idea, according to UMG executive vice president and chief digital officer Michael Nash, is to avoid “direct cannibalization,” preventing the AI songs from competing with artists’ actual tracks on streaming, and making sure the platform generates entirely new revenue.

Users will only be able to work with songs whose creators have opted in, which will limit the available catalog, perhaps vastly so. But Universal is confident that there is some interest from artists. “From our preliminary conversations as we extend the outreach,” says Nash, “there are artists that are not gonna want to be the first wave of product introduction. And there are artists that are definitely going to want to be part of the first wave.” Their pitch to artists is, he adds, “You’ll have enormous control over the parameters around that interaction, and then you will have significant economic participation. As opposed to the current world in which there’s no control and there’s very little economic participation, it’s a pretty attractive proposition.”

In addition to royalties, artists who opt in will also receive what Sanchez argues could be valuable data. “Maybe I’m a country singer, but people are trying to use me to make hip hop,” he says. “That’s amazing. Maybe I wanna lean into that.”

The Music Artists Coalition, a non-profit representing the interests of recording artists founded by legendary artist manager and exec Irving Azoff, said in a press release that certain questions still need to be answered about the deal, including whether artists will get a portion of any settlement money paid by Udio, the details of the revenue splits, and how disagreements over permissions will be handled in cases of songs with multiple creators. “Artists must have creative control, fair compensation, and clarity about deals being done,” Azoff said.

There are also questions around the underlying training data needed to make the new Udio model work — Nash says Universal is still determining what portion of their catalog they’ll make available for training. “The approach that we’re taking,” Nash says, “is really around where we have rights and the ability to convey our content for the development of underlying capability of the models.” (A Universal source emphasized that the company has no intention of making its entire catalog available for the training, adding that “there is a very rigorous process of clearance underway.”)

Nash argues that for music fans, using AI to work with existing, well-known songs is a much more attractive proposition than simply creating tracks from scratch. Nash cites research from the streaming service Deezer showing that while 30 percent of tracks uploaded to it are AI-generated — about 30,000 tracks per day — that content accounts for less than half of one percent of actual listening. Spotify recently confirmed similar figures, he says.

“There’s very little organic demand for AI slop,” Nash says. “In fact, people are frustrated by the fact that their social media feeds are being murdered by AI slop right now.” The real opportunity, he argues, is in tools that deepen connections between artists and fans. He points to research from the content-tracking platform Pex showing that 30 to 40 percent of music content on social media has already been modified by users — sped up, slowed down, mashed up or remixed. “What that tells you is there’s tremendous consumer interest in touching the content and directly interacting with the content,” he says.

Suno, which is still in litigation with Universal and the other labels, has a vastly larger footprint than Udio — SimilarWeb shows Suno attracted around 43.8 million visitors in September, while Udio’s had just 2.3 million. Nash argues that Udio has prioritized negotiations with Universal in recent months over growing the service, and believes their technology is as strong as Suno’s. The latter service, he insists, is investing in “an unsustainable status quo.”

It’s unclear precisely what the new Udio/Universal service will look like, and Sanchez says he’s uncertain if it will even use the Udio brandname. Udio’s existing service will carry on while the new one takes shape, but it has already turned off the ability to download tracks. (Beginning Nov. 3, the service will reopen downloads for a 48-hour grace period to allow users to retrieve previously created tracks.) “We think that Udio has made the right bets,” says Nash, “and we think that they’re going to put a great product into the marketplace.”