Universal and Sony sue Suno again over 60,202 recordings they say still shape v6

Suno generates two tracks for every prompt, and the record of which one the user keeps is the preference data the company fed back into development ^[11]. The complaint says Suno has admitted it trained v6 using "user interactions" with previous iterations of its models ^[10]. It adds that no such interaction is clean: "every such signal has been a judgment about audio outputs generated using Suno's unlicensed models," the filing states ^[12].

The filing also alleges v6 was built through knowledge distillation, which it describes as a process "whereby a new 'student' model is trained to reproduce the learned behavior of a predecessor 'teacher' model" ^[13]. It names v4, v4.5, v4.5+, v5, v4.5-all and v5.5 as trained on the same copied corpus ^[15]. Its conclusion is that "every model Suno has ever released ... is the product of, and continues to exploit, Suno's unauthorized copying of the Copyrighted Recordings" ^[21]. The filing also says Suno has never stated that it destroyed the copies ^[16].

The 45-page complaint asks for two kinds of money ^[3]. At the willful-infringement ceiling of $150,000 a work ^[4], 60,202 recordings come to $9,030,300,000 ^[1]. The circumvention claim at $2,500, applied once to each recording, adds $150,505,000 ^[2], for $9,180,805,000 ^[3]. Music Business Worldwide, which obtained the filing, gives those as just over $9 billion and roughly $150 million ^[19][20]. The statute prices acts of circumvention, not works ^[5], so that second line moves with the download logs.

Warner Music Group settled with Suno in November 2025, BMG signed on August 12, and the Believe partnership was announced on September 8 ^[17]; v6 launched the next day ^[7]. Universal and Sony filed nine days after the launch ^[4]. Suno did not have an immediate comment, Variety reported ^[18].

Jack Brody, Suno's chief product officer, said at launch that "v6 was trained entirely from scratch, from the ground up," on data that "doesn't include data from Universal or Sony" ^[8]. The labels answer that the lineage carries the liability. "Training a 'new' model on the outputs of an infringing model does not eliminate the infringement; it launders it," the complaint states. And: "v6 is not a fresh start; it is the fruit of the same poisoned tree" ^[9].

A court can read a model's outputs as new expression. Then the lineage argument fails, and the two labels are back to the original copying claim that brought them to Boston the first time ^[1]. It can instead hold that what a teacher model transmits carries the licensing status of what that teacher learned from ^[13]. On that reading, a licence signed this year buys future use and leaves the copies Suno is alleged to still hold unpriced ^[16]. Or Suno settles, and the negotiation begins by discounting $9,180,805,000 ^[3]. I think the third is likeliest. The fact that would undercut the labels is a screening record: if Suno can show v6's preference data excluded outputs traceable to the 60,202 recordings, the laundering theory loses its factual basis ^[2].