The debate around Suno’s Terms of Service has split the AI music community into warring camps.
On one side, music attorneys wave red flags about indemnification clauses and copyright disclaimers.
On the other, AI advocates insist the terms are industry standard and the panic is overblown.
Both sides miss the actual story.
Suno’s November 2025 Terms of Service update arrived weeks after Warner Music Group settled its copyright lawsuit against the platform.
The timing matters. So does the language shift that followed. Digital Music News captured the change through the Wayback Machine: in November, Suno’s site stated plainly, “If you make songs while subscribed to the Pro or Premier plan, you own the songs.” By December, that certainty had evaporated.
The updated version now reads: “Suno is ultimately responsible for the output itself, though you help guide it.”
This isn’t a minor tweak. It represents a fundamental repositioning of who bears legal responsibility for AI-generated music.
AI Music Copyright: Why Suno Can’t Guarantee Ownership
Pro and Premier subscribers receive what Suno calls “commercial use rights.” The platform assigns users “all of its right, title and interest” in outputs generated during active subscriptions.
Sounds straightforward. Yet the same document immediately disclaims any warranty that copyright will “vest” in that output.
Machine learning creates this paradox. AI models train on existing music to generate new sounds. Those new sounds might be unique.
They might accidentally replicate patterns from training data. They might fall somewhere in between. Nobody knows until someone sues.
The Terms of Service acknowledge this explicitly: “Due to the nature of machine learning, your Output may not be unique across users and the Service may generate the same or similar output for a third party.”
Musicians operating under traditional copyright frameworks understand clear ownership boundaries. You write a song. You own it. AI platforms cannot offer that clarity because the technology itself cannot guarantee it.
The Perpetual Licence You Grant Suno (And Can’t Revoke)
Free versus paid tier comparisons dominate the discourse around Suno’s terms. Less discussed is the licence every user grants regardless of subscription status.
By uploading lyrics, audio, or any creative input, users grant Suno a “worldwide, non-exclusive, fully paid-up, sublicensable, assignable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right and license” to that content.
The platform can use submissions to train models, create derivative works, and sublicense to third parties. Users cannot revoke this permission.
For creators inputting original lyrics or instrumental demos, this creates a peculiar dynamic. You might write words entirely yourself, upload them to Suno, and receive commercial rights to the output.
But Suno retains perpetual rights to your lyrics, can train its models on them, and might theoretically output similar lyrics to another user’s prompt months later.
The terms explicitly state this possibility: “It trains on, it may end up spitting it out in someone else’s output.”
Whether this constitutes standard industry practice depends entirely on which industry you reference. Social media platforms require similar licences to display user content.
Music production tools typically do not claim perpetual rights to compositions created with their software.
Suno operates in a grey zone between these categories.
Indemnification Explained: Who Pays When AI Music Gets Sued
Section 12 of the Terms of Service contains language that should concern any creator planning commercial releases.
Users agree to “defend, indemnify, and hold harmless” Suno and affiliated parties from claims arising from service use, including through “generation or use of any Output.”
This means if an AI-generated track goes viral, attracts copyright claims, and triggers litigation, the user covers Suno’s legal fees. The platform explicitly disclaims any warranty that outputs won’t infringe third-party rights.
Music attorney commentary emphasises this risk. AI advocate responses frame it as standard terms.
Both perspectives hold partial truth. The indemnification clause is indeed standard for user-generated content platforms.
What’s unusual is combining this clause with commercial music creation tools that actively encourage monetisation.
Traditional music production software doesn’t require users to indemnify manufacturers if a produced track infringes someone’s copyright.
The liability model assumes creators understand what sounds they’re using and whether they’ve cleared necessary rights.
AI generation inverts this assumption. The platform controls what sounds the model produces. Users control only the prompts. Yet legal liability flows entirely to users.
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Warner Settlement Changes: What Suno’s 2025 Terms Update Means
Suno’s settlement with Warner Music Group in November 2025 preceded the Terms of Service language shift.
The agreement indicated Suno would launch “more advanced and licensed models” and implement “monthly download caps.”
The Rights & Ownership page now reflects these changes. Free tier outputs remain strictly non-commercial. Paid tier outputs receive commercial licensing, but the platform’s recent acknowledgement that “Suno is ultimately responsible for the output” complicates prior ownership claims.
This language change matters for pending litigation. Suno currently faces lawsuits from both major labels and independent artists.
The latter case, filed by Anthony Justice and 5th Wheel Records in June 2025, focuses specifically on whether AI outputs infringe existing recordings.
Suno’s legal strategy argues that even if its AI learned from copyrighted songs, the outputs constitute entirely new sounds that cannot infringe under sound recording copyright law.
The motion references Section 114(b) of the Copyright Act, which provides special protections for sound recordings distinct from other copyrighted works.
If courts accept this argument, it could reshape AI music’s legal landscape. If they reject it, every creator who monetised Suno-generated tracks might face retroactive liability.
The Terms of Service position Suno to survive either outcome. Users bear the legal risk regardless.
Free vs Paid Tiers: Commercial Rights Explained
Free and Basic tier restrictions deserve particular attention. These outputs carry no commercial rights. Users must provide attribution to Suno “in each case.”
The terms don’t define what constitutes adequate attribution, leaving creators guessing about compliance.
More significantly, subscribing to a paid tier after creating a track on the free plan doesn’t retroactively grant commercial rights.
The remix feature provides a potential workaround. Users can create new versions of free-tier outputs while subscribed, theoretically bringing them under paid-tier licensing.
Whether this constitutes creating a “new” song or simply re-generating the same output remains unclear. The terms don’t address this scenario directly.
For creators testing the platform before committing to subscription, this structure creates perverse incentives.
Generate something exceptional on the free tier, and you cannot legally monetise it without recreating it as a paying subscriber.
But machine learning’s non-deterministic nature means the recreation might sound different. Or identical. Or similar enough to trigger the uniqueness warnings in the terms.
What Musicians Need to Know Before Monetising AI Music
The debate between legal warnings and AI advocacy both miss musicians’ practical needs. Creators require clear answers to specific questions:
Can I safely release this track to streaming platforms? Will I face copyright claims? If I do face claims, what happens? Who pays legal fees? How do I prove I created this track legitimately?
Suno’s Terms of Service provide definitive answers to none of these questions. This isn’t necessarily malicious design. The legal framework for AI-generated music doesn’t exist yet. Multiple lawsuits will determine it over coming years.
Until courts establish precedents, platforms like Suno cannot offer guarantees. Traditional music creation assumed human authorship. Copyright law built around this assumption. AI generation challenges the foundation.
Musicians trained in standard industry practice understand rights chains. You write a song, register the copyright, licence to labels or distributors, collect royalties through collection societies. Each step has clear legal frameworks developed over decades.
AI music collapses this chain into a single button press. The legal frameworks haven’t caught up.
Why Creators Still Choose Suno Despite Legal Uncertainty
Understanding the risks doesn’t explain why thousands of creators continue using platforms like Suno.
The value proposition remains compelling for specific use cases, even acknowledging legal uncertainty.
Cost represents the most obvious factor. Traditional music production requires studio time, session musicians, mixing engineers, and mastering services.
A professional recording can cost £5,000 to £50,000. Suno’s Pro tier costs £10 monthly. For creators testing ideas or building portfolios, this difference matters significantly.
Speed changes creative workflows entirely. Writing, arranging, recording, and producing a track traditionally takes weeks or months. Suno generates complete songs in minutes.
Creators can test 50 different arrangements, lyrics variations, or genre experiments in an afternoon.
This iteration speed enables creative exploration impossible through traditional methods.
Access democratises music creation. Someone without instrumental training, music theory knowledge, or recording equipment can transform ideas into finished productions.
The barrier to entry drops from years of training and thousands of pounds in equipment to a subscription and creative prompts.
Legitimate professional use cases exist beyond direct release. Advertising agencies use AI music for client presentations before commissioning full productions.
Film composers create temp tracks for directors. Songwriters generate reference demos to pitch concepts. Game developers produce placeholder audio during development.
These applications accept legal uncertainty because the AI output never reaches commercial release.
The statistical reality of copyright claims also factors into creator calculations. Millions of tracks exist on streaming platforms.
Copyright claims typically target visible successes, not obscure releases with minimal streams.
For creators making music as hobbyists or building small audiences, the practical risk of litigation remains low even if legal exposure exists.
Some creators view AI tools as instruments rather than composers. They write original lyrics, craft specific arrangements through detailed prompts, and iterate until outputs match their vision.
From this perspective, Suno functions like a sophisticated synthesiser or virtual band. The creative decisions remain human even if execution involves AI.
These justifications don’t eliminate legal risks. They explain why creators accept them. The calculation differs for each person based on their goals, resources, and risk tolerance.
Someone releasing one experimental album on Bandcamp faces different stakes than someone pursuing sync licensing deals or major label attention.
AI Music Lawsuits: Industry-Wide Legal Uncertainty in 2026
Suno’s terms reflect industry-wide uncertainty, not platform-specific problems. Udio faces similar lawsuits.
Universal and Udio announced a partnership in October 2025 to launch a licenced music creation platform in 2026. That platform’s terms will likely contain similar disclaimers and limitations.
The Danish music rights group Koda sued Suno in November 2025, citing evidence the platform trained on copyrighted works from Danish artists including Aqua and MØ.
Koda projects a potential 28% revenue loss for the Danish music industry by 2030 if current AI development continues unchecked.
These battles will determine whether AI music generation constitutes fair use, requires licensing, or violates copyright entirely. Until courts decide, every creator using these platforms operates in legal uncertainty.
The Terms of Service document this uncertainty explicitly. Paid subscribers receive commercial rights. They receive no guarantees those rights are enforceable.
They agree to indemnify the platform if anything goes wrong. They grant the platform perpetual rights to their creative inputs.
Whether this arrangement benefits creators depends entirely on individual risk tolerance and intended use cases.
How to Protect Yourself When Using Suno AI Music
Musicians approaching AI generation tools should understand what they’re actually agreeing to. Commercial rights don’t equal copyright protection.
Ownership claims don’t guarantee legal safety. Indemnification clauses make users the first line of legal defence.
For creators using Suno as a demo tool or inspiration source, these risks might be acceptable. Generate ideas, re-record with traditional instruments and vocals, release the human-performed version. The AI output never reaches the public. Legal exposure remains minimal.
For creators releasing AI-generated tracks directly to streaming platforms, the calculation changes. Copyright claims might arrive months or years later. The Terms of Service require users to cover Suno’s legal defence costs if that happens.
Document everything. Keep records of prompts used, dates generated, subscription status during generation.
Use content ID systems to check outputs against existing music databases. Consider re-recording valuable tracks with human musicians before commercial release.
Most importantly, understand that “you own your music” and “you own your music with no warranty that copyright exists and full liability for any infringement claims” represent fundamentally different propositions.
Suno’s Terms of Service state both simultaneously. The legal outcomes will reveal which one actually applied.