A Munich court has ruled that Suno, the US-based artificial intelligence music generation platform, violated copyright law by using existing songs to train its AI without compensating composers — a landmark decision that could reshape how the music industry relates to generative AI worldwide. The ruling, handed down by the Landgericht München I (Munich Regional Court I), came in a case brought by GEMA, Germany's collecting society responsible for protecting the rights of composers and songwriters.
Suno allows users to generate original-sounding tracks by typing a text prompt describing a desired style or theme — asking, for example, how Pink Floyd might sound as a punk band. Within minutes, the platform produces a complete song. With around two million paying subscribers globally and a monthly subscription costing up to €22, Suno is the market leader in AI music generation. The problem, according to GEMA, is that Suno trained its AI on real copyrighted music without paying a cent to the artists whose creative work made that training possible.
To make its case, GEMA submitted the lyrics of six well-known hits — including "Atemlos durch die Nacht" (a major German pop song by Helene Fischer), "Forever Young" and "Mambo No. 5" — without specifying melody, rhythm or arrangement. In each case, Suno's output closely resembled the original. Presiding judge Elke Schwager concluded that the results could not be explained by coincidence, given the complexity and length of the pieces involved: the AI model had clearly "memorised" entire songs. The court found that Suno had breached copyright in two distinct ways — by storing the songs within the AI model, and by reproducing them for users on demand. Suno's argument that it was users, not the company itself, who infringed copyright was rejected outright.
The court also dismissed Suno's reliance on EU data-mining exemptions, which allow music to be analysed abstractly for structural patterns, but do not permit full reproduction of complete works. Crucially, because Suno's training took place in the United States, the court also applied US law — and found that the American