Sony lost its bid to turn the existing Udio case into a 30,000-song fight, then did the obvious thing: it filed a new lawsuit over those songs anyway.
Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York kept Sony Music Entertainment's original copyright case against Uncharted Labs, the company behind Udio, at 333 recordings. That ruling mattered. It stopped Sony from adding 30,442 more works late in discovery, and it kept the immediate damages math from ballooning into the billions.
But it didn't end the fight. According to The Verge, Sony filed a separate New York lawsuit on July 20 over more than 30,000 songs, including Elvis Presley's Hound Dog, Beyoncé's Say My Name and Harry Styles' As It Was. So the courtroom door Sony couldn't force open in the first case has not been closed. It has just become a second case.
The judge kept one case manageable
Sony had asked in May to add the recordings after gaining access to Udio's training data during discovery. Hellerstein said no. Music Business Worldwide reported that the judge found the late expansion would require substantial additional production and review, create more disputes, and materially change the scope of the case before him. That's a procedural ruling, not a pardon.
Sony still has the right to sue over those recordings. Hellerstein's point was narrower: you don't take a 333-work case and, near the end of document discovery, turn it into a 30,775-work case without blowing up the schedule. That's fair. Courts are not filing cabinets for whatever a plaintiff uncovers halfway through a fight.
The arithmetic explains why both sides cared so much. Copyright law allows statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work for willful infringement. At 333 songs, Sony's theoretical ceiling is just under $50 million. At 30,775 songs, it is roughly $4.6 billion. That is not a rounding error. If you're Udio, that difference is the distance between a serious litigation risk and a company-threatening verdict.
Sony is the last major label still pushing Udio in court. It didn't get there alone.
The majors have split their strategy
Universal Music Group, Sony and Warner Music Group filed the original lawsuit against Udio in June 2024, accusing the company of copying sound recordings at scale to train its AI music model. Universal broke away first. In an October 29, 2025 announcement, UMG said it had settled the litigation with Udio and agreed to work on a licensed AI music platform planned for 2026.
Warner followed in November. It settled with Udio on November 19, then announced a separate Suno deal on November 25 that also resolved litigation and set up a licensed AI music partnership. Warner's Suno agreement included download restrictions and artist opt-in controls, with new licensed models planned for 2026.
Sony has not taken that route. Frankly, that is the whole story. Universal and Warner are trying to turn AI music generators into controlled licensing businesses. Sony is still trying to prove, in court, that the training itself crossed a copyright line.
That stance is not only about Udio. Sony is also still pursuing Suno in Massachusetts, alongside Universal, in front of Chief Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV. The remaining labels have been fighting over whether they can add tens of thousands of additional works there too, and Suno quickly pointed to Hellerstein's Udio ruling as a reason to keep that case from expanding. One ruling in New York is already being used as ammunition in Boston.
Udio, meanwhile, has spent the past year turning lawsuits into partnerships. Its new label-backed model keeps AI-created tracks inside its own service, rather than letting users push them freely to Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube. That walled structure gives labels a way to license catalogs for AI training without immediately flooding streaming platforms with tracks that compete against their own artists.
That's the bargain on offer. Sony isn't buying it yet.
Hellerstein's ruling doesn't decide whether Udio infringed Sony's copyrights, and it doesn't decide whether AI training is fair use. It only says Sony's first case stays small enough to try. The new lawsuit changes the practical picture, because Sony is now pursuing the larger song list anyway, just on a cleaner procedural track.
The next fight is no longer whether 30,000 songs can be bolted onto the old case. It's whether Sony can make those songs carry their own case, one by one, with Hound Dog, Say My Name and As It Was now sitting in the public list. That is a harder fight for Udio to wave away.
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