UMG signs ElevenLabs, and ElevenMusic adds downloads and a rights promise a day later

Universal Music Group and ElevenLabs announced a multi-year licensing agreement on 10 Sep 2026. It is ElevenLabs' first deal with a major label. The first product is a fan platform, still in development, where people will be able to remix and mash up tracks from participating artists and songwriters, make new interpretations of them, and use what the companies call "personalized vocal experiences". The two firms also plan to build AI audio tools for artists. No launch date, revenue split or financial terms were disclosed.

A day later, on 11 Sep, ElevenLabs' existing music app shipped Music v2.5 with downloads and a rights statement, and its terms of use were updated the same day. The two announcements are formally separate. Read together, they are the best preview we have of how the UMG product might handle the question that matters most to artists: who gets to decide how their voice is used.

What did UMG and ElevenLabs actually agree?

Less than the headlines suggest. ElevenLabs' post refers to "participating" artists and to artist participation, but it doesn't say who signs up: the artist or the label. It says artists and songwriters should "share in the value created" and be fairly compensated, without saying how. The platform will sit apart from ElevenLabs' Music API and the ElevenMusic app, so the ElevenMusic terms below don't automatically apply to it.

The deal also matters for who UMG is choosing to work with. Music Business Worldwide reports that ElevenLabs is valued at $11bn after a $500m Series D in February, more than twice Suno's $5.4bn. UMG and Sony are still plaintiffs in the copyright case against Suno filed in Boston in June 2024, and UMG settled its own case against Udio in October 2025. Zinstrel reads UMG's position as licensed AI on UMG's terms rather than opposition to AI. We think that's right.

What changed in ElevenMusic v2.5?

The v2.5 post makes v2.5 the default model and promises more layered songs and more natural instruments, without benchmarks. The concrete changes are downloads and rights:

• Downloads: five lossless downloads a day on Free, 400 a month on Pro. Tracks that reference other artists' songs can't be downloaded.
• Rights: ElevenMusic says users have rights to what they make on every plan, including Free, from the moment a track is created. It adds that rights and commercial use vary by tier.

The terms give the detail. Free users who use a new song commercially must credit "Made with ElevenMusic", and only songs made on Pro can go to streaming services. Adaptations (covers, remixes and other works built on music someone else uploaded) can only be used inside ElevenMusic, whatever the plan.

What it means for artists

This is where it gets serious for musicians. ElevenMusic launched with more than 4,000 indie and emerging artists and pitches itself as a way for them to earn from fan engagement. We could find no published revenue-share terms. Here's what the terms actually say an uploading artist agrees to:

• Your voice can be reused. The terms give, as an example of an Adaptation, other users using an artist's voice, as heard in their uploaded music, as the vocals for newly generated music.
• Removal isn't a full revocation. If you take your music down, it stops being available for new Adaptations. But Adaptations other users have already made or stored using your music or your voice may stay available.
• The licence isn't a payment. You grant ElevenLabs a worldwide, royalty-free licence over your content and your name, image, likeness and voice. The terms say this licence does not by itself entitle you to any payout or royalty. The licence over outputs is perpetual and irrevocable.
• One limit in your favour: ElevenLabs can't commercialise your voice or likeness on a standalone basis without your permission.

ElevenLabs already runs a different model for famous voices. Its Iconic Marketplace, launched in November 2025 with Michael Caine and more than 25 other voices, has companies request access to a voice for a specific project, and frames each deal around consent. That's case-by-case approval. The ElevenMusic terms are a blanket grant. The UMG platform will have to choose one of those models, and the announcement doesn't say which.

Builders are already treating voice and music as one toolset. One builder on X put ElevenLabs' voice direction side by side with Suno's speech output, a sign of how quickly voice tools and music tools are converging. Once a vocal model can speak and sing, "personalized vocal experiences" could mean a fan getting a star's voice to say their name, sing a line they wrote, or both.

What we think

The real question in this deal isn't the catalogue licence. It's who controls a voice. A recording is a label asset. A voice belongs to the person who has it, and for many artists it is their whole career. A catalogue-level licence signed by UMG shouldn't be what lets a fan make an artist's voice sing words the artist never chose.

Three things would show whether this platform puts artists first:

1. Per-artist opt-in, signed by the artist. A label signature shouldn't count. Where a contract gives the label likeness rights, the artist should still get a separate yes or no on voice.
2. Revocation that removes existing outputs. ElevenMusic's terms let past Adaptations survive a takedown. For voice, that's backwards. If an artist withdraws, fan-made versions using their voice should come down too.
3. Per-use payment for voice. That means paying each time a voice is used, not folding it into a catalogue fee shared out by streams.

Who wins? UMG, which gets a second licensed AI partner while it keeps suing Suno, and ElevenLabs, which gets the kind of label credibility that, as Zinstrel put it, its voice-AI money couldn't buy on its own. Superstars may win too, because they can negotiate. The likely losers are mid-tier UMG artists whose contracts never imagined this, and session vocalists whose sound is easiest to substitute.

This deal is about fans using an artist's voice. That's a different job from tools artists use on their own sessions, such as a browser DAW with an AI co-producer like Veena, where the artist decides what's generated and keeps the stems. Both will exist. The consent rules are what should keep them separate.