What Major Label Litigation? AI Music Upstart Udio Launches ‘Audio-to-Audio’ Remixing

Photo Credit: Udio

As the major label battle with generative AI music start-ups Suno and Udio heat up, the latter has released a new model with audio-to-audio remixing. Here’s the latest.Lawsuits filed by Sony Music, Warner Music, and Universal Music claim that Udio and Suno have unlawfully copied the label’s recordings to train their music generation models. The lawsuit alleges that these services could be used to “saturate the market with machine-generated content that will directly compete with, cheapen, and ultimately drown out the genuine sound recordings on which [major labels] are built.”

Following that legal action, both Udio and Suno hired Latham & Watkins to represent them in the matter. Latham & Watkins have been key players in defending companies using artificial intelligence, including their work in defending Anthropic against infringement allegations filed by UMG and Concord Music. Latham & Watkins also represents OpenAI in several of its lawsuits—including one filed by comedian Sarah Silverman.

Udio’s latest model, v1.5 contains a host of improvements over its previous model, including improved audio quality, key control, and improved global language results. New features include a dedicated creation page, stem downloads, audio-to-audio remixing, and shareable lyric videos.Stem downloads allow users to split fully-mixed Udio tracks into four separate stems—vocals, bass, drums, and everything else. Advanced users can take those stems and remix them in external tools, or only use a single element of an Udio song gen in their music.

The audio-to-audio remix feature allows users to upload their own tracks and remix them. Music can be re-imagined in a number of new styles, flowing freely from one to the next. The uploads feature may attract major label attention again—as the feature could be used to create remixes of copyrighted works without permission.

Finally, key control allows users to guide the creation of music by suggesting keys like C minor or Ab major. Udio says the feature may not be perfect, but will lend creators more harmonic control over their creations.