Suno v6 drops, trained on licensed music as copyright suits mount

Suno on Wednesday unveiled Suno v6, a new model family it says was developed using licensed data from music labels and distributors including Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe. The company said the new models are not trained using the data that powered previous versions of its music-generating tool, a direct response to the copyright litigation that has shadowed the startup since record labels accused it of training on copyrighted material without permission.

The release comes as Suno works through a pile of lawsuits from record labels over its prompt-to-song generator. Suno settled with Warner Music Group last year and struck a licensing deal with BMG last month, according to the company. The new model family appears designed to put that legal fight behind it by anchoring future development in licensed catalogues rather than the disputed training data of earlier versions.

Suno is shipping three versions of the model. The base Suno v6 model, available to paying users, is positioned as reliable and steerable for controlled outputs. Suno v6 wild, also for paying users, is an experimental model meant for ideation and unexpected results. Suno v6 mini is a faster version open to all users. The company plans to retire its older models.

The new lineup also expands what users can do with a track. Suno v6 lets users edit part of a song using a prompt or a word in the lyrics, and can take text, images or video as references to create tracks. Users can separate an instrument from a sample and build a new beat from it. Suno said it plans to add features that let users remix songs, provided the respective artists opt in to a new program it is setting up with music labels that would let Suno use their songs for AI-generated features.

Chief product officer Jack Brody framed the release around revenue, telling TechCrunch that derivative work opens more opportunity for revenue generation across the ecosystem. "I think the music ecosystem and our partners are always looking for ways to create more revenue opportunities for their rights holders and artists. So a big part of this release is creating additional revenue streams there," Brody said.

The launch follows other recent moves to police how generated music circulates. Last month Suno said it plans to add a watermark to songs generated on its platform, and it recently introduced download limits tied to account tier. Brody said Suno can help manage ecosystem challenges such as streaming fraud and low-intent mass exportation and uploading to distributors, but argued that governing what content appears on platforms falls to the distributors and platforms themselves.

What remains unclear is how the licensing deals translate into artist payouts and whether the opt-in remix program will attract broad participation from labels and musicians. Suno has not detailed the terms of its agreements with Warner Music Group, BMG or Believe, or how much of the new model's training data comes from each partner.