Despite ongoing lawsuits – including a recent loss in a copyright infringement case involving GEMA – Suno has seen some success on another front. As announced in early August, the AI music company has entered into a global licensing agreement with BMG.
Suno X BMG: A Licensing Deal with an Opt-In Option
In its official announcement, BMG, an international music company handling both music publishing and recording rights under one platform, describes the new collaboration as a “global alliance that establishes a strategic framework covering BMG’s recorded and music publishing repertoire.”
According to Celine Joshua, EVP, Global Marketing & Streaming at BMG, the deal will help artists and songwriters “remain at the center of the opportunity and share in the value it creates.” “This agreement establishes strong protections, clear economics, and new creative possibilities for artists and their fans,” she added.
This statement is echoed by Mikey Shulman, Suno co-founder and CEO. “We believe the future of music will be more participatory, creating entirely new ways for artists and fans to connect. Building that future responsibly means working directly with the people who make music and the companies that represent them.”
In practice, the partnership involves Suno paying for BMG’s catalog of recordings from its artists, as well as covering the costs associated with using any BMG songs to train Suno’s earlier models.
An important part of the agreement is its opt-in element. BMG artists and songwriters are free to choose whether they want to allow Suno to use their work, giving rights holders more control over how their music is incorporated into the platform.
BMG Follows Warner in Partnering with Suno
As many media outlets have highlighted, BMG is the first major rights holder to sign a licensing deal with Suno since Warner Music Group settled the lawsuit between the two companies and subsequently partnered with the AI music-generating platform in November 2025.
The two deals are notably different, however: unlike Warner – and the two other major labels – BMG has never been in active litigation with Suno. This means there was no lawsuit to settle between the two parties – but rather past use of BMG’s music to compensate for.
BMG’s more receptive attitude toward Suno has been widely noted in the industry. That is particularly interesting given that, in early 2026, BMG sued Anthropic for allegedly using copyrighted works by its artists, including songs by Bruno Mars and the Rolling Stones, to train its AI models without consent. That case is currently ongoing.
However, this does not necessarily mean that BMG has embraced unrestricted generative AI. Rather, the company’s approach suggests that it may see a role for the technology in the music industry while pushing for clearer rules, licensing frameworks, and compensation mechanisms for artists and rights holders.
That position also became apparent in July 2026, when BMG joined a group of other music labels, including WMG, Universal, and Sony, in demanding clearer guidelines for how AI-generated music should be treated when entering official music charts. The coalition proposed that only tracks that were “substantially human-made” could qualify for a place on official charts, which are often considered an “industry’s measure of success.”
Suno in 2026: Active Lawsuits, Download Restrictions & Model Changes
For Suno, the new global alliance with BMG comes at a time of significant change and turmoil. As previously mentioned – and as repeatedly underlined in coverage of the company – Suno is involved in numerous legal disputes over alleged copyright infringement. These include lawsuits with Sony and Universal, as well as Denmark’s collecting society, Koda.
More recently, Suno has also faced a new lawsuit from independent music publisher Round Hill Music, which alleges that the company used copyrighted lyrics to train its AI system without authorization. Filed in August 2026, the case adds another layer to the growing legal pressure surrounding Suno’s training practices.
Business-wise, however, Suno seems to be slowly paving a path that, at least to some extent, aligns more closely with a more controlled and structured approach to AI.
The platform has introduced download limits to its current plans, set to take effect in September this year. Under the new system, Pro subscribers will be capped at 20 monthly downloads, while Premium subscribers will be capped at 60 monthly songs. Suno Studio subscribers, however, will continue to have unlimited monthly downloads.
The platform has also debuted a so-called lifetime download limit for free users, meaning unsubscribed users can download and share a total of 7 songs on streaming platforms. Once they reach the limit, the only way to get more downloads is to subscribe.
For these free users, the seven downloads are for personal use only. They are not allowed to distribute their creations to streaming services, sell them, or use them in commercial work. As Suno stated, the new download restrictions should make it “harder for bad actors to mass-export music.”
“We are introducing download limits to ensure our platform is used for intentional music creation, while still allowing everyone to create, remix, listen, and share on Suno,” the company explained.
However, it’s important to note that subscribers who reach their monthly limit will be able to purchase additional downloads. This could have a direct impact on Suno’s profitability and overall monetization strategy.
In this sense, the new restrictions could serve a dual purpose: allowing Suno to address the growing problem of AI-generated music being mass-exported to streaming platforms, while also creating additional opportunities to monetize its most active users.
Suno’s Next Generation of Models
Still, Suno also promises to develop new, more sustainable business models through partnerships with other music industry bodies. The company has previously indicated that the new generation of models will use licensed music, marking a shift away from the training approach that has driven its copyright disputes. Once the new models launch, Suno says it will retire all previous models.
“These models are better than anything we’ve ever released – on every metric we’ve ever measured.”
This suggests that Suno is not only changing how users can access and distribute the music they create, but is also preparing for a broader shift in how its underlying AI models are developed and licensed.
Additionally, Suno says it is committed to adopting “new audio watermarking and fingerprinting technology” to work with distribution platforms in “combatting fraud and misuse.”
For a company facing significant legal pressure from the traditional music industry, the changes mentioned above could mark an important shift in direction. Whether this will be enough to resolve the company’s ongoing legal challenges remains to be seen. But the BMG agreement suggests that licensing could increasingly become an important part of how AI music companies and traditional rights holders learn to coexist.
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Martina is a Berlin-based music writer and digital content specialist. She started playing the violin at age six and spent ten years immersed in classical music. Today, she writes about all things music, with a particular interest in the complexities of the music business, streaming, and artist fairness.
