Universal Music settles with Udio and licenses a new AI music platform
Confirmed
Importance: major (4 of 5)Status
- Claim
Confirmed
- Our reporting
- High confidence
- Importance
- Major (4 of 5)
- Last verified
- 4 October 2026
Your AI and this story
- GPT-6 AstraIn its training data
- Claude Opus 5.5In its training data
- Gemini 4 HydrogenIn its training data
- Grok 4.7In its training data
It happened before the cutoffs of all four assistants, so it can be in their training data.
Key facts
- UMG-Udio settlement and licenses announced 2025-10-29; new service promised for 2026
- Warner Music Group settled with Udio and signed a similar license on 2025-11-19
- Udio’s existing product stayed online with creations kept inside a walled garden plus fingerprinting and filtering
- Artists and songwriters must opt in; the service lets users make remixes, covers and new songs with participating artists’ voices and compositions
- Later licensors reported: Kobalt (Apr 2026), Merlin, Believe; the consumer app was reported in May 2026 to be called Starstruck (Cover, Reimagine, Remix, Create modes), still unlaunched as of 2026-09 per sources found
- Sony Music is the only major without a deal: after a June 29, 2026 ruling barred adding them to its June 2024 case, it filed a second SDNY suit on 2026-07-20 over 30,117 recordings identified by fingerprinting Udio’s training data, alleging YouTube stream-ripping with yt-dlp; in its Aug 2026 answer Udio admitted using YouTube audio and yt-dlp but claimed fair use (MBW, Digital Music News)
What happened
Universal Music Group, which had sued Udio (with Sony and Warner, via the RIAA) in June 2024, settled and turned the dispute into a licensing partnership. Udio committed to build a new creation-plus-listening subscription service on models trained only on authorized music, where participating artists and songwriters are credited and paid. Warner signed a similar settlement and license three weeks later. To comply before launch, Udio locked its existing app into a “walled garden”: generated tracks could no longer be downloaded or distributed off-platform.
In a private April 2026 webinar (reported by Water & Music, Music Ally and MBW in May 2026) Udio described the coming mobile-first fan app, Starstruck, with four modes: Cover, Reimagine, Remix and Create. We found no confirmation that it had launched by 2026-09-29.
Why it matters
It was the first time a major label turned an AI music copyright lawsuit into a license, setting the template (licensed training, opt-in artists, revenue share, output controls) later followed by Warner’s deal with Suno (Nov 2025) and Suno v6 (Sep 2026).
Sources
9 sources from 5 sites. Numbers match the chips in the text.
9 sources: 2 primary, 7 press
Primary
- UMG and Udio announce first strategic agreements (PR Newswire)prnewswire.com, official
- WMG and Udio collaborate on licensed music creation service (PR Newswire)prnewswire.com, official
Press
- Music Business Worldwide: UMG settles Udio lawsuitmusicbusinessworldwide.com, press
- Digital Music News: Udio scores Kobalt licensing dealdigitalmusicnews.com, press
- Music Ally: Udio reveals details of its licensed AI-music app Starstruckmusically.com, press
- Music Business Worldwide: Udio’s licensed AI music app will be called Starstruckmusicbusinessworldwide.com, press
- Water & Music: A scoop on Udio’s upcoming app, Starstrucknewsletter.waterandmusic.com, press
- MBW: Sony Music sues Udio again over 30,000+ recordingsmusicbusinessworldwide.com, press
- Digital Music News: Udio fires back against supersized Sony Music lawsuit (Aug 31, 2026)digitalmusicnews.com, press
Changes
- Added Sony Music’s second suit against Udio (July 2026) and Udio’s answer; Sony remains unsettled
- Added MBW and Water & Music Starstruck links; re-checked, still no launch found (webinar with Kobalt was 2026-04-30)
- Filed