BMG’s Suno Deal Divides Artists as AI Monopolies Lure Legacy Catalogs

The corporate race to strike pacts with generative AI is dividing legacy artists and their representatives, according to reporting from Billboard. At the center of the dispute is Suno, the AI music platform currently valued at $5.4 billion with two million paid subscribers and a reported 100 million users generating songs. BMG’s recent partnership with Suno includes an opt-in clause, allowing artists and songwriters to decide if their music can be fed into the model for training and generation. For some, the upfront money talks. Veteran rock band Mötley Crüe—who sold their recorded catalog to BMG in 2021 for an estimated $90 million to $150 million—opted in without hesitation. “BMG has asked them, and they’re saying, ‘As long as you made a deal where we get paid, we’ll opt in,’” manager Allen Kovac told Billboard. “It promotes your music. It doesn’t dilute your music.” Kovac cited cover bands as evidence that synthetic copies will never cannibalize demand for original acts. That logic is shortsighted. Equating an algorithmic engine capable of infinite automated output to weekend bar bands misjudges the leverage being handed away. While major competitors like Sony and Universal Music Group battle Suno in federal court over copyright infringement, legacy teams taking the licensing carrot are giving Silicon Valley validation before the legal framework is settled. Expect the opt-in split between cash-ready heritage acts and vulnerable working songwriters to widen from here.