Italy's competition regulator puts Suno's terms of service on trial

Italy's competition and consumer authority, the AGCM, said on 6 Oct 2026 that it has opened an investigation into Suno over unfair terms in its Terms of Service. The case number is CV278. The legal basis is Article 33 of the Italian Consumer Code, the rule against terms that create a significant imbalance of rights and obligations to the consumer's detriment (Italian original).

This is not a copyright lawsuit, and it is not a ruling. It is a consumer regulator reading the contract every Suno user clicks through, and asking whether that contract is fair.

What the AGCM flagged

The press release lists six groups of clauses:

• Unilateral changes. Broad power to change the contract, the service and subscription prices without a justified reason.
• Suspension and termination. Power to suspend, disable or delete an account, and the content in it, at any time, for any reason, without notice.
• Terms you can't see. Users appear to accept further terms they can't know about when they sign up.
• Liability. Very broad, generic limits on Suno's liability, including for personal injury.
• Copyright. A licence users must grant whose scope is undefined and all-encompassing, plus a waiver of moral rights that the AGCM says may conflict with Articles 20 and following of Italy's copyright law (Law 633/1941).
• Disputes. Binding individual arbitration administered in the US, short deadlines to bring claims, a class-action waiver and exclusive jurisdiction for Massachusetts.

The AGCM also said it would run a public consultation on the clauses, open to national trade associations, chambers of commerce and registered consumer associations.

What Suno's terms actually say

We read the current terms, which took effect on 3 Sep 2026 alongside the download caps and model changes Suno set out in its FAQ. The AGCM's summary matches the text:

• Users grant Suno a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, sublicensable licence over their content, and the terms extend it to the AI and machine-learning models related to the service.
• Users "irrevocably waive" their moral rights in their content or voice model. The waiver has no "where permitted by law" qualifier.
• Suno can change the terms and its prices, and continuing to use the service counts as accepting a new price.
• Suno can suspend or terminate accounts at its sole discretion, and termination may happen without prior notice.
• Disputes go to individual arbitration. Claims must be raised within one year or are barred, where the law allows. Massachusetts law governs everything except the arbitration clause.
• The only way out of arbitration is to reject future changes to it within 30 days, and the terms say that is not an opt-out from arbitration altogether.

We found no section written for EU or EEA consumers.

Why the moral-rights clause is the one to watch

Moral rights are the right to be credited as the author and to object to changes that harm your honour or reputation. In Italy they survive even after you sell the economic rights (Article 20), and Article 22 says they are inalienable. A blanket contractual waiver sits awkwardly with that, which is the AGCM's point.

For a Suno user, the waiver covers what you put in: your lyrics, your uploaded audio, your voice model. You agree that you can't object to how that material is altered, remixed or reused.

What creators are already running into

The complaints line up with the clauses. On X, one subscriber who had prepaid for a year said in early September that Suno had changed its terms and was refusing to deliver what they had paid for. That is the unilateral-change clause in practice, and it follows the September download caps.

In another post, a small act said Suno had flagged its own freshly recorded upload as matching an existing recording, wouldn't say which, and that support's answer amounted to "nothing we can do". When the contract allows suspension for any reason without notice, and disputes go to arbitration in another country, that answer is hard to challenge.

What happens next

An investigation is the start, not the end. Suno can respond, the consultation gathers views from trade and consumer bodies, and only then does the AGCM decide whether the clauses are unfair.

Update, 23 Oct: Digital Policy Alert reports that the consultation opened on 14 Oct and runs until 13 Nov 2026.

What we think

The obvious takeaway is "read the terms like a record deal". That's right, and it's the least of it.

The bigger shift is the forum. Most of the AI-music fight so far has been copyright litigation between rights holders and AI companies, which takes years and mostly protects catalogues that already exist. Consumer law works differently. It protects the person who signed, it doesn't care whether you're a famous artist, and in the EU an unfair term is not binding on the consumer (Directive 93/13, Article 6). The directive's list of terms that may be unfair includes changing the contract or the service unilaterally without a valid reason, and hindering the consumer's right to take legal action. That reads a lot like the AGCM's list.

We're not aware of an earlier case where a regulator went after an AI-music generator's terms this way, though we can't rule one out. If the AGCM finds against Suno, we expect the result to be read well beyond Italy. The rules it applies come from an EU directive, and Suno publishes one set of terms for everyone, so changing them for Italy may in practice mean changing them for everyone. That is our inference, not anything the AGCM has said.

There is a catch that matters for working musicians. The directive defines a consumer as someone acting outside their trade, business or profession. A producer who uses a Pro plan for commercial releases could be treated as acting professionally, and might not get the same protection. How courts would draw that line for a hobbyist who sells a few tracks is an open question. So this case will not fix the contract for the professionals who rely on it most. Until it is fixed, treat your Suno terms as part of your rights paperwork. Keep a copy of the terms in force when you made each song. Don't upload anything into a voice model or prompt that you'd need to control later. And if you've prepaid for a year, keep the receipt and the plan description you bought.

Sources

• AGCM, CV278 press release (English), 6 Oct 2026
• AGCM, CV278 comunicato stampa (Italian), 6 Oct 2026
• Suno, Terms of Service, effective 3 Sep 2026
• Suno Help Center, Upcoming Changes FAQ: Downloads, Models, and Terms of Service
• Normattiva, Law 633/1941, Article 20 and Article 22
• Council Directive 93/13/EEC on unfair terms in consumer contracts
• Digital Policy Alert, consultation on Suno's terms
• X posts: prepaid subscriber, 4 Sep 2026; flagged upload, 4 Oct 2026