The label returned to a New York federal court on Monday after a judge refused to let it fold newly discovered recordings into its existing case against the music generator.
Sony Music Entertainment has filed a fresh lawsuit against AI music generator Udio, claiming the startup copied more than 30,000 of its recordings without permission to train its models. Songs by Beyoncé, Harry Styles and Elvis Presley are among the works named.
The complaint, lodged Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, puts a precise figure on the alleged copying: 30,117 tracks, which Sony says it identified inside Udio’s training datasets during discovery in its earlier case.
Why there are now two cases
Sony first went after Udio and rival platform Suno in June 2024, filing alongside Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. When the label tried to attach the newly surfaced 30,117 recordings to that original complaint, U.S. District Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein turned down the request last month. Rather than let the tracks go unaddressed, Sony opened a second front.
Its filing argues that using protected sound recordings to build a commercial AI product “requires permission from rightsholders,” and warns that products built otherwise could displace human creativity rather than assist it. Sony frames the dispute as a test of whether copyright still rewards invention, adding that holding Udio to the law does not require slowing down the technology itself.
Representatives for Sony and Udio did not respond to immediate requests for comment.
Udio’s position
Responding to Sony’s original suit in April, Udio conceded that it had trained on copyrighted songs pulled from YouTube, but argued the practice qualifies as fair use. The company described its training as “a back-end technological process, invisible to the public,” carried out to produce what it characterizes as a new, non-infringing output.
The licensing deals that changed the picture
Both Universal and Warner have since settled their claims against Udio and signed licensing agreements with the company, which is preparing an industry-backed model for release later this year. Sony and Universal remain in litigation against Suno.
Those settlements cut both ways, and Sony is using them as evidence. If Udio was able to license catalogues from two of the three major labels, the argument runs, it could have licensed Sony’s recordings too instead of allegedly taking them from YouTube.
What Sony wants
The label is asking for damages of at least $150,000 for every work infringed, a figure that would run into the billions across 30,117 recordings, along with a court order barring Udio from training on Sony-owned material.
The suit lands in the middle of a broader reckoning across the media industry, with Hollywood studios, record labels and news organizations all trying to work out how to deal with AI companies without signing away the value of their archives. Some have chosen licensing deals. Sony, for now, is choosing court.