Studio powerhouses Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, and Sony Music Entertainment signed a licensing agreement with AI music startup Klay Vision to provide their music catalogs as training material for the startup’s song-generation engine, the companies announced Thursday. WMG and UMG also have licensing agreements with music startup Udio — both of which began as lawsuits — but Klay is the first to publicly announce partnerships with all of the Big Three. Suno, another popular song-generation platform, is still wrapped up in lawsuits and hasn’t yet reached licensing agreements with the studios.
Music is just one industry turning to licensing deals to settle its long, embattled copyright disputes with AI companies. Content creators are inking deals to license their stockpile of old videos to train video-generation models. “Go take your money, girl,” one creator told Semafor. The phenomenon represents a widespread realization that it’s easier, and more lucrative, to join powerful and well-funded AI firms rather than fight the future norm.