George TsagkarakisSuno’s newest model was supposed to be a clean slate. Sony and Universal Music Group say it’s the same old problem with a new version number attached.
The two labels have filed another lawsuit against the AI music company. Their argument is that Suno’s v6 model still infringes their copyrights, because it was trained on outputs from Suno’s earlier models, and those earlier models were trained on unlicensed music ripped from YouTube and other sources.
The labels have a name for it: model laundering
The complaint accuses Suno of “model laundering.” The labels spell out the theory directly:
“Training a ‘new’ model on the outputs of an infringing model does not eliminate the infringement; it launders it, passing the value of Plaintiffs’ expression from the copied recordings into the tainted models, from those models into their outputs, and from those outputs into v6 … V6 is not a fresh start; it is the fruit of the same poisoned tree.”
That’s a pointed legal argument. It says the copyright problem doesn’t wash out after one generation of training. It travels downstream with every model built on top of the last one.
Suno’s own description of v6 is thin
When v6 launched, Suno’s Jack Brody said it was “trained from the ground up, with a new set of data,” including “user data.” He didn’t give details beyond that.
Suno later confirmed that the data includes “creations” from users. The company wouldn’t elaborate further when asked for comment.
And that’s the gap the labels are driving through. If “user data” means songs people generated with older Suno models, then by the labels’ logic, v6 inherited whatever those models absorbed.
Distillation is the second accusation
Sony also alleges that Suno used distillation to train v6. According to the complaint, v6 was trained to replicate the results of Suno’s previous “teacher” models, which were built using infringing data.
The complaint goes further, saying that “even a model not directly trained on Plaintiffs’ recordings is informed by, and benefits from, Suno’s retained unauthorized copies.”
Strip away the legal phrasing and the labels’ position is simple. Unless Suno starts over from nothing, every model it ships will keep resting on the same disputed data.
Two labels still haven’t signed
Sony and UMG stand out here for another reason. They’re notable holdouts that did not sign a licensing agreement with Suno.
So this isn’t a fight Suno can settle by pointing to v6’s new training run. The labels have made it clear they don’t accept that a fresh version number resets anything, and until Suno either licenses their catalogs or shows what’s in that “user data,” you should treat any claim that v6 is clean as Suno’s word against theirs.
