One AI-music case bought peace this year. The other did not, and its docket is still taking filings.

The paper's June 27 piece reported that Universal's Udio settlement turned a lawsuit into a license, the outcome a slogan never predicts. That piece named the case that did not settle; this is that case, still in front of a judge.

CourtListener's docket for UMG Recordings v. Suno records the suit the major labels brought in the federal District of Massachusetts, case 1:24-cv-11611, with the complaint, exhibits and a running list of entries that did not stop when Udio signed its deal. [1] A reader who concluded from the Udio license that the industry had made peace with AI training can open this docket and see the opposite: a live case, an active defendant and no settlement on the page. One company licensed; one company litigates.

The Copyright Office still holds the policy ground neither outcome decides. Its artificial-intelligence page collects the notices, comments and the multi-part study on using copyrighted works to train models, the federal record a private settlement does not close. [2] Whether unlicensed training was lawful is a question for the courts and the office, and the Udio deal answered it for two companies, not for the law.

The settlement that did land is the contrast that makes the open case legible. Universal Music Group's own notice announced its agreements with Udio and a planned licensed AI platform, a business resolution rather than a verdict. [3] Set beside the Suno docket, it shows the same month producing a license and a lawsuit from the same plaintiff — facts a single moral frame cannot hold at once.

This is the divergence. X argues that training is plainly theft or plainly progress, depending on which side of the model a user sits. Trade coverage in Billboard frames it as labels against startups. The records are less obedient: one defendant paid and licensed, one defendant is still being sued, and the federal study remains open. The honest place to follow AI music stays the docket and the office, not the feed.

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles