AI music company Suno, led by CEO Mikey Shulman, posted a set of principles on its website Thursday (Aug. 6). “We’ve always believed that how we build matters just as much as what we build,” wrote Shulman in a company blog post. The list of principles included the stated goals that “AI should enable originality, not imitation” and that “more people creating music should strengthen the ecosystem.” The post also reiterated the company’s plan to limit downloads of AI songs from its platform — something first promised during its settlement and licensing deal with Warner Music Group.
The new post comes just a week after the AI music giant, recently valued at over $5.4 billion, lost a copyright infringement battle with German collection society GEMA. In the lawsuit, the society accused Suno of replicating songs from their members, including Lou Bega’s classic “Mambo No. 5.”
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“AI should help people create something new, not imitate someone else’s work,” the Suno post reads. “This philosophy has guided how we’ve built our models and platform from the start.” It continued to detail Suno’s training strategies, dubbed “Original Creation, By Design,” to reduce the possibility of unauthorized recreation of a human-made song. “For example, we intentionally chose not to use artist names in our training metadata because our goal is to help people create original songs — not music that sounds like existing artists,” he wrote.
Suno’s platform also prevents users typing in specific artist names to prompt results in their style. This, however, has not prevented all instances of unauthorized replication of copyrights included in its dataset. To date, the company has been hit with several copyright infringement lawsuits — including those filed by GEMA, Danish rights organization Koda and the three major music companies, Sony Music, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. (WMG has since settled their part of the lawsuit with Suno and struck a licensing deal. UMG and Sony continue to pursue the case.)
The company blog post also pointed out that download limits for Suno-generated songs are coming soon. This plan was first announced in late 2025 and was a stipulation of Suno’s settlement with WMG. The new post does not state exactly when this will be rolled out, but it teased that “these changes won’t affect the vast majority of our users, but they will make large-scale abuse much harder,” wrote Shulman.
He added that “while we don’t think it’s our role to decide what has artistic value, we have an important responsibility to make it harder to abuse AI tools in ways that undermine a healthy music ecosystem,” like the mass exporting of AI songs, which has become a popular method for bad actors to spread out artificial streaming schemes over a large number of tracks and to better evade detection.
AI songs making their way onto streaming services, charts and social media has long been a concern for the music industry establishment. The majors noted this in their lawsuit against Suno, which began in June 2024, saying AI music “saturate[s] the market” and “directly compete[s] with cheapen[s] and ultimately drown[s] out the genuine sound recordings.”
Since then, the majors’ opinions on what should be done to mitigate the flood AI music have somewhat diverged. Universal feels strongly about AI music companies being what its chief digital officer and executive vp Michael Nash calls “walled gardens,” meaning the platforms become closed sandboxes with no downloading allowed. In an interview with Billboard, Nash was asked if Suno’s lack of “walled garden” was the reason why UMG had not been able to reach a settlement with it yet. Nash replied: “If I treated your question as a rhetorical question, I would say yes, having articulated the walled garden distinction and its importance [for UMG,] that’s kind of a hat-hanger in this discussion.” Warner, on the other hand, agreed to settle with Suno, satisfied by a promised limit on downloads. Sony’s stance on the matter is unclear.
In July, a record industry coalition released a proposal for how streaming services could treat the impact of AI-generated tracks on their platforms. This included the suggestion of adding labels to any AI-generated or AI-assisted recording. Disclosure of AI use would be voluntary by the user, and while the proposal gained widespread support among the labels, it is still unclear if any streaming service will agree to implement their ideas.
Suno’s approach to managing the fast-rising level of AI songs on the internet also includes using “new watermarking and fingerprinting techniques,” as stated in the blog post, which Shulman said are set to arrive “in the coming weeks…so we can partner even more closely with distribution platforms on combating fraud and misuse.”
Read the full blog post below:
How We’re Building the Future of Music Responsibly
By Mikey Shulman
We believe the future of music will be more participatory than ever before.
Music is one of the oldest and most universal forms of human expression, and it has always evolved alongside technology. The last wave of technology made it easier for people to find and listen to music. We believe this next wave will make it possible for far more people to experience the joys of creating it.
Our mission is to build the world’s best platform for music creation while contributing to a healthy and growing music ecosystem.
We’ve always believed that how we build matters just as much as what we build. From the beginning, we’ve held ourselves to a clear set of principles that help us make decisions in a fast-changing environment, always rooted in supporting artistry and creativity.
Today we’re sharing those principles, how they already show up in our work, and the new actions we’re taking because of them.
Our Principles
Great Music is Made by People
Technology can unlock new ways to create, but it can’t replace the human experiences, emotions, and imperfections that make music meaningful.
That’s why we build our models and products alongside artists, songwriters, musicians, and producers. Every week, we host writing camps with artists at all stages of their careers to understand how our tools fit into their creative workflows, where they fall short, and what we should improve.
Our goal is to get inside the creative process with artists of varying backgrounds and approaches so we can build tools that support how they actually want to create.
Technology Opens New Possibilities for Creatives
We believe our tools should open new ways for artists to create, reach fans and build their careers. That belief is central to the next generation of music models we’re developing in partnership with the music industry.
As we build toward that future, we support artists today through several initiatives. We invest in educational programs that provide creative creators with resources to grow their careers. ThroughSpark, our creative funding and incubator program for emerging, unsigned artists, we provide grants, mentorship, and dedicated marketing support.And we’re exploring a range of mechanisms for artists to capture new opportunities and benefits that couldn’t have existed before this technology.
AI Should Enable Originality, Not Imitation
AI should help people create something new, not imitate someone else’s work. This philosophy has guided how we’ve built our models and platform from the start.
We use training strategies we call Original Creation, By Design to reduce the risk of unauthorized reproductions. For example, we intentionally chose not to use artist names in our training metadata because our goal is to help people create original songs — not music that sounds like existing artists.
Unlike many AI music platforms, we’ve never allowed prompts for specific artists or copyrighted songs.
Instead, when a prompt references a specific artist, we remove the artist’s name and redirect the request toward descriptive musical characteristics. We also work with Audible Magic and Musixmatch to screen uploaded audio files and lyrics for potential unauthorized use of artists’ work.
More People Creating Music Should Strengthen the Ecosystem
We believe that when more people experience the joy of creating music, music itself becomes a bigger part of their lives. They feel more connected to the songs they create, and the artists and music that inspires them. Most of the music people make on Suno is deeply meaningful: a lullaby for a child, a song for a partner, or something made to preserve a memory. That music may never be released publicly, but it still has real value to the person who made it.
That is fundamentally different from using generative technology to mass export content. While we don’t think it’s our role to decide what has artistic value, we have an important responsibility to make it harder to abuse AI tools in ways that undermine a healthy music ecosystem.
Last year, we shared that we planned to introduce a more intentional approach to downloads. We will soon introduce a new downloads policy designed to limit the ability to mass distribute songs on streaming platforms, while preserving the professional, creative, and personal ways people use Suno. These changes won’t affect the vast majority of our users, but they will make large-scale abuse much harder.
New Tools for Artists and Platforms
These principles — and our ongoing conversations with creatives, rightsholders, users and platforms — continue to inform our roadmap.
As AI becomes an even greater part of how music is made, people need reliable ways to understand when it has been used.
Today, we’re rolling out new transparency tools that align with emerging industry standards so songs generated on Suno can be identified if they are shared on other platforms. In the coming weeks, we will also be adopting new audio watermarking and fingerprinting technology so we can partner even more closely with distribution platforms on combating fraud and misuse.
These tools are designed to be durable and resistant to tampering, without affecting the listening experience. They are also not intended to pass judgment on whether a song is good, meaningful, or sufficiently human.
Ultimately, we believe it should be up to artists and platforms to decide what they want to disclose. Our role is to build tools that give them transparency options and make it easier to collaborate across the industry.
Clearer Community Guidelines
Our Community Guidelines have always reflected clear positions on harmful behavior. Today, we’re updating them to make our rules easier to understand and to be more explicit about activities that have no place on Suno.
From the beginning, we have prohibited attempts to recreate existing songs, upload material people do not have the rights to use, or use someone’s voice or likeness without permission. We also prohibit scams, spam, fake engagement, attempts to evade our systems through bots, deceptive audio presented as authentic, and other harmful activity.
Our Trust & Safety team proactively reviews content and investigates reports submitted through our in-app reporting tools. Depending on the severity of a violation, enforcement can range from warnings and temporary suspensions to permanent account bans and, where appropriate, referrals to the relevant authorities.
Looking ahead
This is one of the most interesting moments music has experienced in decades. The landscape will continue to evolve quickly, and many of the questions ahead are bigger than any one company. The best answers will come from artists, songwriters, labels, publishers, platforms, and technology companies all working together.
We believe this moment has the potential to bring more people into making music, create new opportunities for artists, and strengthen the music ecosystem. Staying grounded in our principles, and continuing to listen, learn, and adapt, is how we’ll navigate that change as we help build toward that future.
We’re excited about what comes next.
