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AI music and copyright: what you actually own
What the vendor lets you do and what the law protects are two different questions. Most confusion starts by merging them.
Casey Lindstrom
Two separate questions get mixed together constantly. The first is what the vendor permits you to do, which is a contract question answered by the terms you agreed to. The second is whether anyone owns copyright in the output at all, which is a law question and is not settled the same way everywhere. Confusing them is how people end up surprised.
What the vendors grant
Free tiers grant nothing commercial. All seven tools I tested restrict their free tier to private use. A monetised video is not private use.
Some vendors hide commercial use above the advertised tier. Mubert advertises 14 USD a month and puts commercial rights at 32.49 USD. Boomy advertises 9.99 USD and puts full rights at 29.99 USD. Both numbers are on the vendors' own pricing pages, and both are easy to miss.
Some licences die with the subscription. Boomy ties your rights to an active subscription. Soundraw does the opposite: what you made during a paid month stays licensed after you cancel. If you are building a catalogue rather than a single video, this is the most important line in the terms.
Some vendors have signed with rightsholders and some have not. Udio settled with Universal Music in October 2025 and has agreements with Warner, Merlin and Kobalt: four. ElevenLabs has Merlin and Kobalt and, since September 2026, Universal: three. Suno has Warner and BMG: two, and Universal and Sony are both still litigating against it, while Sony filed a further claim against Udio in July 2026. This does not make Suno unusable, but it does change who carries the risk if a claim ever arrives.
How the ground moved, in order
The major labels sue Suno and Udio over training data. Source
The US Copyright Office publishes its copyrightability report: what a machine produced without human authorship is not protected. Source
A federal appeals court confirms in Thaler v. Perlmutter that a work with no human author cannot be registered. Source
ElevenLabs launches its music model with Merlin and Kobalt licences already signed, the first of the three to start that way round. Source
Udio settles with Universal Music and signs a deal with it. Source
Warner signs with both sides in the same month: a settlement and licence with Suno, and an agreement with Udio. Source
Udio adds Kobalt, its fourth rightsholder agreement. Source
Sony Music files a new claim against Udio over 30,000 songs. A deal with one label is not peace with the industry. Source
Suno signs a global deal with BMG, its second. Source
Universal and ElevenLabs announce a joint platform, taking ElevenLabs to three. Source
Whether you own the output
In the United States, the Copyright Office has held that material generated by a machine without meaningful human authorship is not protected by copyright, and that protection attaches only to the human contribution, such as lyrics you wrote or an arrangement you materially shaped. The practical consequence is that a track you prompted into existence and did nothing else to may well be something you are allowed to sell and also something you cannot stop anyone else from using.
That is not a contradiction, it is two different bodies of law. The vendor can licence you to use the file. Nobody can licence you a copyright that does not exist.
The practical takeaway: write your own lyrics. It improves the song, and it is the part of the work most clearly yours.
A checklist before you publish
- Are you on a paid tier, and is it the tier that actually carries commercial rights rather than the one in the headline?
- Does the licence survive cancellation, or does it end when you stop paying?
- Did you write the lyrics, or did the model?
- Does the track resemble a specific existing recording closely enough that somebody would notice? No licence protects you from that.
- Is the use a client's rather than yours? If so, check what you are promising them in your own contract.
The mistake I made, so you do not have to
Early in this test I put a free-tier track under a short video and uploaded it before I had read the tier table properly. Nothing happened to me, and that is exactly the problem: nothing happening is not the same as being in the clear. I took it down, read the terms of all seven vendors end to end, and that afternoon is where most of this page comes from.
What I learned is that the pricing page and the licence page tell two different stories at four of the seven vendors. The pricing page sells a tier. The licence page says which tier the rights live on. If you only ever open one of them, open the second.
How I would explain this to a client
If somebody is paying me for work with AI music in it, I tell them three things in writing. First, which tool made it and on which paid tier, so the licence is traceable. Second, that the generated audio may not be protectable by copyright, so we cannot stop a competitor using something similar. Third, who wrote the lyrics, because that is the part where human authorship actually sits.
None of that is legal advice and I am not qualified to give any. It is what I do, and the point of putting it here is that the conversation goes much better before the invoice than after it.
Questions people ask
Can I copyright a song made with AI?
In the United States, not the machine-generated part. Copyright attaches to meaningful human authorship, such as lyrics you wrote yourself or an arrangement you materially shaped. The Copyright Office has been consistent on this point.
Can I sell AI-generated music?
Usually yes, on the correct paid tier. Selling is a licence question and the vendor answers it. Whether you can stop somebody else from reusing the same track is a copyright question and the answer is often no.
Which AI music tool is safest for commercial use?
ElevenLabs Music and Soundraw. ElevenLabs has the broadest set of published rightsholder agreements at the lowest entry price; Soundraw has the clearest licence that outlives the subscription.
Do I need to credit the AI tool?
Only Mubert's free tier requires attribution among the tools I tested. Platforms are a separate matter: several streaming services now ask you to disclose AI involvement when you upload.
Sources outside this site
- U.S. Copyright Office, Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability (January 2025)
- US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, Thaler v. Perlmutter, No. 23-5233 (18 March 2025)
- Music Week, RIAA files legal claim against Suno and Udio (24 June 2024)
- Music Week, UMG settles lawsuit and signs strategic deal with Udio (30 October 2025)
- The Hollywood Reporter, Universal Music Group settles its lawsuit against Udio (29 October 2025)
- Music Business Worldwide, Warner Music Group strikes deal with Suno and settles its copyright lawsuit (25 November 2025)
- Music Business Worldwide, Suno inks global licensing deal with BMG (12 August 2026)
- Variety, Sony Music files a new lawsuit against Udio over 30,000 songs (July 2026)
- Spotify, Spotify strengthens AI protections for artists, songwriters and producers (25 September 2025)
- TechCrunch, Tidal cuts off monetisation for fully AI-generated music (29 June 2026)
- TechCrunch, YouTube will now automatically label AI videos (27 May 2026)
Casey Lindstrom
Writes and tests everything on this site
I have written about music software since 2014, first for a regional print weekly and since 2019 on the web. I pay for every subscription on this site out of my own pocket, run each tool through the same brief before I write a word about it, and keep the raw exports so I can go back and check myself.