Warner Music CEO Robert Kyncl defends label's Suno deal as UMG and Sony press lawsuit

Robert Kyncl, CEO of Warner Music Group, defended the label's decision to license its catalog to Suno during an appearance on Semafor's Mixed Signals podcast on August 14, arguing that once an AI music service has real traction with users, the smarter move is to bring it into a licensed system rather than keep fighting it in court. "In my opinion, you embrace it," Kyncl said, framing the choice as a chance to build a new licensed market with a fast-growing platform rather than trying to kill it off.

Kyncl's position had been a lonely one in the industry for months, after Warner agreed nine months ago to drop its own lawsuit against Suno in exchange for a licensing deal and an equity stake in the company. That changed the week before his podcast appearance, when BMG announced its own global licensing agreement with Suno, leaving Universal Music Group and Sony Music, coordinated through the RIAA, as the only major players still pursuing active litigation against the AI company.

Kyncl leaned on his own history to make the case, drawing a direct line to his years as YouTube's chief business officer, when he worked to convert the platform's copyright disputes with the music industry into commercial deals that he said eventually generated billions of dollars for the business. "I view AI as UGC on steroids," he said, arguing that the same playbook applies now, just with content that gets modified rather than simply reused. He was less worried, he added, about today's AI-made music charting than about a flood of low-effort AI tracks crowding out the listening time that pays human artists and songwriters.

Kyncl said the bigger risk isn't Suno's chart presence today but what could happen if labels push AI platforms further underground. "Users say, 'I just want to do this,'" he said, warning that fans who can't get that from a licensed platform will simply "move on to something else," potentially an unlicensed, open-source alternative beyond the industry's reach. He argued human artists still offer something AI can't replicate: "An artist touring is like a blue check mark on identity," he said, pointing to how fans follow the real lives behind the music the way they followed Taylor Swift's engagement to Travis Kelce, "and that happens with artists of all sizes."

Universal and Sony would likely dispute Kyncl's framing that Suno has "gone legit," pointing to Suno's loss in a German copyright case brought by the collecting society GEMA earlier in August. For now, the industry remains split down the middle: two majors betting that licensing gets artists paid faster than litigation, and two others still in court trying to make Suno answer for how it built its models in the first place.