This article is informative and does not constitute legal advice. The law around AI-generated music is evolving quickly, several cases are ongoing and nothing has been definitively settled. For any personal situation, particularly before registering a work or signing a contract, the advice of a copyright professional or direct contact with your collecting society remains essential.
Here is a confusion that costs many creators dearly. You pay for a Suno subscription, you generate a track, the interface tells you that you have a commercial licence. You logically conclude that the track is yours and that you will earn royalties on it. That is where the misunderstanding begins, and it rests on two legal objects that are poles apart.
Commercial licence and copyright: two different things
The distinction is fundamental, and it is almost never clearly explained.
The commercial licence granted by Suno, Udio or a competitor is a private contractual right between you and the platform. It authorises you to exploit the audio file: put it on Spotify, monetise it on YouTube, use it in an advertisement. It is a commercial agreement, nothing more.
Copyright, on the other hand, is a legal right that derives from the intellectual property code. In French law, it arises from the creation of an original work by a natural person. It is not something a platform can grant or sell you: it either arises from the human creative act, or it does not arise at all.
The consequence is direct and often misunderstood: the Suno licence protects you commercially on the platform, copyright protects you artistically and financially. To release a track professionally in France, you need both. Having one does not give you the other.
What the French position says
On this point, the Sacem as well as French and European case law converge in 2026: a work generated 100% by AI, without substantial human creative input, is not protectable by copyright.
Practical consequence: you cannot register a fully AI-generated track with the Sacem. And without registration, no copyright royalties are collected on that share. The track exists, you can sell it, but it does not generate copyright royalties.
The principle that emerges is that of human contribution. You receive copyright royalties only on what you have actually created. If you wrote the lyrics and generated the instrumental, you can claim the share corresponding to the lyrics in the distribution. If you re-recorded a vocal, reworked an arrangement, did creative mixing, those contributions count. If you only typed a prompt and clicked generate, there is no substantial creative input in the legal sense, so nothing to register.
The logic is coherent, even if it may seem harsh: copyright rewards an act of creation, not an order placed with a tool. The question that remains open, and that will fuel litigation for years, is that of the threshold: at what level of intervention does a highly worked prompt, a selection among a hundred generations, a meticulous edit become a creative contribution? No stable answer exists today.
The 31 July ruling, to watch closely
This week could bring a decisive development. On Friday 31 July 2026, at 9 a.m., the Munich regional court will deliver its judgment in the case opposing GEMA, the German equivalent of the Sacem, to Suno.
GEMA, which represents more than 95,000 German composers, authors and publishers and more than two million rights holders worldwide, filed its complaint in January 2025. It accuses Suno of having trained its models on protected music without a licence or remuneration, and asks the court to rule that training AI on protected music requires the authorisation of rights holders. At the March 2026 hearing, its lawyers presented direct comparisons between Suno outputs and known tracks.
Three elements make this ruling particularly important. It would be the first major European decision on AI music training. It will be handed down by the same chamber and the same judge who ruled in GEMA's favour against OpenAI in November 2025, in a case involving song lyrics, where the text and data mining exception was not deemed applicable. And under German law, a first-instance decision can be enforced immediately, even if Suno appeals.
For the sake of fairness, it should be noted: until the verdict is delivered, GEMA's accusations remain allegations. Suno had in fact tried to have the judge recused, arguing that her earlier ruling against OpenAI created an appearance of bias. Its request was rejected.
The legal landscape, in brief
| Case | Status |
|---|---|
| GEMA v. Suno (Munich) | Verdict on 31 July 2026 |
| Universal and Sony v. Suno (Massachusetts) | Postponed: decisive motions in April 2027 |
| Sony v. Udio (New York) | Discovery extended until August 2026 |
| Musicians v. Warner and Universal | Complaint filed in June 2026 over distribution of agreements |
This last row deserves a word, because it is revealing. American musicians have sued not the AI companies, but their own record labels, arguing that the agreements concluded with Suno and Udio triggered a new-use remuneration clause provided for in their collective bargaining agreements, and that the labels refused to pay. The labels dispute that obligation. In other words: when the money from AI agreements arrives, the question of how it flows down to artists is not resolved.
The agreements signed, and what they change
The landscape has shifted considerably since late 2025. Suno settled its dispute with Warner Music Group, obtaining the right to train its models on the Warner catalogue. Udio concluded a comparable agreement with Universal, and moved to a closed model that restricted export options. Both platforms are moving towards new licensed models.
The general direction is towards a negotiated remuneration system, inspired by existing collective management mechanisms. That is good news in principle. But two reservations remain: these agreements primarily concern the major catalogues, and the question of how much actually flows down to the individual artist remains largely open, as the musicians' complaint precisely shows.
Three practical tips
Check your subscription before monetising. On both Suno and Udio, commercial use is only authorised with an active paid subscription. A free account is limited to personal use: publishing on Spotify with a track generated on a free plan puts you in breach of contract.
Document your human input. This is the most useful advice. Keep a record of what you actually created: lyric drafts, mixing sessions, vocal takes, successive versions. In the event of a registration or a dispute, your ability to demonstrate substantial creative contribution is what will determine your rights.
Anticipate detection and labelling. Platforms are equipping themselves. Deezer has been rolling out a detection tool for music generated by the most common models since 2025. Bandcamp now bans fully AI-generated music as well as artist identity impersonation. Labelling requirements are progressing. Betting that no one will notice is not a viable strategy.
What to remember
The answer to the question in the title is simpler than it seems, even if it is unwelcome: on a fully generated track, under French law, no one receives copyright royalties, because there is no author. You can exploit it commercially thanks to your licence, but you do not collect royalties on a work that the law does not recognise as such.
What makes this period interesting is that value is shifting precisely towards what the machine does not do: writing, performance, artistic direction, selection. It is human contributions that open up rights. For an artist, the message is therefore not to avoid these tools, but to remain the one who brings something that the prompt does not contain. That is also, incidentally, what makes a track worth listening to.