It’s time for the weekly headline roundup!
This week we’re looking at AI settlement lawsuits, AI studies, Google’s new claims about fair use, and new AI licensing deals.
Musicians Union Sues UMG, WMG Over AI Settlements: ‘Refused to Provide Compensation’
The American Federation of Musicians (AFM) has filed a lawsuit alleging its members aren’t sharing in the upside of the major labels’ landmark licensing settlements with AI music companies Suno and Udio.
– Rachel Scharf, Billboard
AFM, the union for session musicians, is suing Universal Music Group (UMG) and Warner Music Group (WMG) for breach of their collective bargaining agreement. The lawsuit, filed on Friday (June 5) and first obtained and reported by Billboard, focuses on copyright settlements that the two majors reached at the end of 2025 for popular music AI models to be trained on licensed works.
Berklee study explores music, video and use of AI technologies
Berklee College of Music has published a new report exploring “how music is discovered, licensed, created, and used across today’s social media video ecosystem”, as well as the role of video in musicians’ careers, and AI.
– Stuart Dredge, Music Ally
An important note: this isn’t just a survey of musicians. It also interviewed creators (influencers), brand marketers and music supervisors – 1,003 people in total. And the focus was on music use in short-video and social media.
Google says any music uploaded to YouTube is fair game for AI training – and there’s nothing musicians can do
Google wants a copyright lawsuit filed by a group of independent artists over its Lyria music AI model to be thrown out of court. Not based on any tedious ‘fair use’ arguments, but because the YouTube terms and conditions clearly state that Google can do pretty much whatever it wants with the work of any musicians stupid enough to have uploaded their music to the video site.
– Chris Cooke, Complete Music Update
In a new court filing, Google says that the artists involved in this lawsuit “each granted YouTube and Google – which provides the service – a broad licence” to use all the content they uploaded to their YouTube channels in an assortment of ways.
Music Publishers Are Cautiously Warming to AI Song Generator Startups
Artificial intelligence was the main conversation at the National Music Publishers Association’s annual meeting in New York on Wednesday, as the trade organization announced during the event that it inked a licensing agreement with AI music generation platform Udio, a notable step as NMPA head David Israelite referred to the deal as the music business’s first industry wide licensing agreement with an AI music company.
– Ethan Millman, Hollywood Reporter
The NMPA also announced an agreement with AI music startup Klay, which bills itself as a fan-powered platform that allows listeners to use AI to play with the music they’re listening to.
After licensing its AI detection tech to the music industry, Deezer now lets listeners scan their own playlists for AI-generated tracks
Deezer is offering a free tool that lets anyone find out how much of the music in their playlists was generated by AI.
– Murray Stassen, Music Business Worldwide
The AI music detector, hosted on Deezer’s website, can analyze up to 100 playlists per user and works across every streaming service, according to the company.
Users select their streaming service and let Deezer scan their playlists, and are then shown how many of the tracks have been flagged as fully AI-generated.