What we think — By WATMM Desk —
Open weights vs closed apps: a producer's guide to AI music model licences in 2026
What we think: Judge an AI music tool by where the model runs and what happens to your own work, not by the word "licensed". Of the five we checked, only open weights on your own machine combine output ownership, a published training list and nothing sent back to the vendor. The closed apps license catalogue, then use their terms to control what users make.
Stable Audio 3, Lyria 3, Suno v6, ElevenLabs' music products and Udio all describe themselves as responsible about rights, but their terms differ sharply on who owns the output, whether you can release it, and whether your own creations become training data. We read each vendor's terms. Here is what they actually say.
Key facts
- Ownership: Stability (Community License), Suno (Pro and Premier), ElevenMusic and Google all say outputs are yours or that they won't claim them; Udio's terms say Udio and its licensors own the output.
- Release: Suno caps commercial downloads at 20 a month on Pro and 60 on Premier; ElevenMusic allows streaming release only for songs made on Pro; Udio bars downloading and distribution; Stability's free licence covers businesses under $1M a year in revenue.
- Training on you: Suno says v6 learned from user "creations and preference signals", ElevenMusic trains on outputs unless you opt out, and Udio's terms let it train on both inputs and outputs. A local open-weight model sends nothing back.
Every AI music company now says it takes rights seriously. "Fully licensed", "commercially safe" and "mindful of copyright" show up across the launch posts and product pages. For a working producer, those words answer the wrong question. The questions that decide your career are narrower: who owns what you make, can you release it, and what happens to your own work once you've used the tool?
We read the terms for the five options most producers are weighing, as published on 23 Oct 2026. The split that matters isn't licensed versus unlicensed. It's open weights on your own machine versus a closed app that holds the keys.
How do the five compare?
| Who owns the output | Can you release it? | What it was trained on | Does your work train it? | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stable Audio 3 (open weights) | You, "to the extent permitted by applicable law" | Yes; free licence ends at $1M annual revenue | Stock library and Creative Commons audio, listed by count | Not if you run it locally |
| Lyria 3 (Gemini, YouTube) | Google "won't claim ownership" | Launch post doesn't say | Not disclosed; contested in court | Not covered here |
| Suno v6 | You, on Pro or Premier | Pro or Premier, 20 or 60 downloads a month | Partner-licensed music plus users' creations | Yes, under a perpetual licence |
| ElevenMusic | You | Streaming release only from Pro | "Fully licensed" model; partners not named on the launch post | Outputs, unless you opt out |
| Udio | Udio and its licensors | No; downloads disabled | Label deals for a platform still to come | Yes, inputs and outputs |
Stable Audio 3: the only one you can take home
Stability's product page offers downloadable weights for Stable Audio 3.0 Small and Medium. The Medium model card lists its training data by source and count: 806,284 recordings licensed from the AudioSparx stock library and 472,618 Creative Commons files from Freesound. Music-tagged audio was also run past a content-detection company, and copyrighted material it found was removed.
The Community License says you own your outputs "to the extent permitted by applicable law". It is free below US $1,000,000 in annual revenue, commercial users must register, and you can't use outputs to build a rival foundation model. Indemnification comes only with the Enterprise licence. As we noted in our Stable Audio 3 piece, "licensed" here means production-library audio, not label catalogue.
Lyria 3: polished, with the training question in court
Google launched Lyria 3 in the Gemini app on 18 Feb 2026 for users 18 and over, making 30-second tracks. It is also available to creators in YouTube Dream Track. Every track made in Gemini carries a SynthID watermark. Google says it was "very mindful of copyright and partner agreements" in training, but doesn't say what the training data was.
Some independent musicians think they know. In a proposed class action in Illinois, they allege Lyria 3 was trained on their recordings pulled from YouTube without permission or payment. Google moved to dismiss on 8 June, arguing that the YouTube terms they accepted when uploading already license that use (MBW; our case explainer). On outputs, Google's Terms of Service say it "won't claim ownership" of original content you generate, and they bar misleading people into thinking generative AI content was made by a human. That is the closest thing to a release policy we found.
Suno v6: licensed, metered, and learning from you
Suno's v6, launched on 9 Sep 2026, was developed with partners "including Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe", and Suno said it would retire its older models. Suno later said v6 learned from partner-licensed content plus "creations and preference signals" from its users (MBW). Universal and Sony sued again on 18 Sep over 60,202 recordings.
Under the terms in force since 3 Sep, Pro and Premier subscribers are assigned Suno's rights in their outputs, though Suno makes "no representation or warranty" that any copyright will exist. Free-tier use is personal and non-commercial. What you submit is licensed to Suno perpetually and irrevocably, including to improve its models. Release runs through a meter: per the FAQ, commercial rights attach to songs paying subscribers download, and Pro gets 20 downloads a month and Premier 60 (more in our piece on the cap). Retiring the old models shows the cost of renting an instrument: one Reddit user quoted by MusicTech complained that the v5.5 voices sound nothing like they did.
ElevenLabs: the clearest terms, with a training catch
ElevenMusic launched on 29 Apr 2026 with more than 4,000 independent artists, "built on top of the ElevenLabs fully licensed music model". Its terms are the most readable of the five. You own your output. Free-plan songs used commercially need a "Made with ElevenMusic" credit, and only songs made on Pro can go to streaming services. Your uploads aren't used for training unless you opt in, but your outputs are, unless you opt out in your settings.
ElevenLabs also runs a separate Music Marketplace, where other users buy a licence to a song you've published. The help centre says creators earn from 25% of the purchase price, rising for active users, with a limit of five uploads a day. Buyers pick a usage type, from a social media licence up to an offline one for live events. It's a real payout model, but a new creator gets a quarter of each sale, before fees and taxes.
Udio: a walled garden by design
Udio's help centre says audio, video and stem downloads have been disabled since its partnership with Universal Music Group. Its terms, last revised 12 Nov 2025, go further. Udio and its licensors own the output, you can use it only for personal, non-commercial purposes, you may not download it or put it on any streaming platform, and Udio may train on both your inputs and its outputs. In July, Udio hired BuyDRM to encrypt its streams. MBW lists licensing deals with Universal, Warner, Merlin, Kobalt and Believe, with Sony still in litigation and no launch date for the licensed app. (We covered what that app, Starstruck, means for artists here.)
What we think
The licence debate has been about catalogue, meaning whose recordings a model learned from. That matters, and the progress is real: four of these five now point to licences or a published data list. But for the producer using the tool, two other questions matter more, and "licensed" answers neither.
First, consent in 2026 mostly means rights-holder consent. Suno's and Udio's partners are labels, publishers and distributors. Google's defence in court is that YouTube's upload terms would already license the training the plaintiffs allege. None of that is an individual artist saying yes to training. Stability's stock-and-Creative-Commons list is the only training set here that names its sources by count, though the model card doesn't say whether or how AudioSparx contributors were paid.
Second, the closed apps treat users' own work as raw material. Suno trains on what users make. ElevenMusic does too unless you opt out. Udio does, and also keeps ownership. That is our reading across their terms, not something any of them puts in a headline. Producers are paying a subscription and supplying training data at the same time.
Our advice is practical. Use closed apps for sketching if you like, but finish and own your music somewhere you control. Download anything you care about while you're subscribed. On ElevenMusic, find the data-use setting and switch it off. Apply the same test to wherever you finish a track: Veena, a browser DAW with an AI co-producer, says everything you make on either plan stays yours. If you can run the model on your own machine, the licence problem gets much smaller.
How we checked
We read each vendor's current terms, help pages and launch posts on 23 Oct 2026 and quote only what they say. We did not test audio quality.
Sources
- Stability AI, Stable Audio; Stable Audio 3 Medium model card; Community License
- Google, Lyria 3 launch post (18 Feb 2026); Terms of Service (effective 30 Jul 2026)
- Music Business Worldwide, Google moves to dismiss Lyria 3 lawsuit (10 Jun 2026)
- Suno, Introducing v6 (9 Sep 2026); Terms of Service (effective 3 Sep 2026); Downloads FAQ
- Music Business Worldwide, Suno confirms v6 was trained on user creations (22 Sep 2026)
- MusicTech, Reddit users turn against Suno after v6 (21 Sep 2026)
- ElevenLabs, Introducing ElevenMusic (29 Apr 2026); ElevenMusic Terms of Use (11 Sep 2026); Music Marketplace earnings; Music Marketplace usage types
- Udio, Terms of Service (12 Nov 2025); UMG partnership changes
- Music Business Worldwide, Udio taps BuyDRM (20 Jul 2026)
Sources
- Stable Audio, Stability AI (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
- stabilityai/stable-audio-3-medium model card, Hugging Face (Stability AI) (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
- Stability AI Community License Agreement, Stability AI (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
- Lyria 3 in the Gemini app, Google (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
- Google Terms of Service (effective 30 July 2026), Google (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
- Introducing v6: A New Generation of Music Models, in Partnership with the Music Industry, Suno (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
- Suno Terms of Service (effective 3 September 2026), Suno (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
- Upcoming Changes FAQ: Downloads, Models, and Terms of Service, Suno Help Center (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
- Introducing ElevenMusic, ElevenLabs (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
- ElevenMusic Terms of Use (last updated 11 September 2026), ElevenLabs (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
- How do creators earn money on Music Marketplace?, ElevenLabs Help Center (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
- What usage types exist in Music Marketplace?, ElevenLabs Help Center (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
- Udio Terms of Service (last revised 12 November 2025), Udio (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
- Changes associated with the Universal Music Group ("UMG") partnership, Udio Help Center (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
- Veena, Veena Studio (primary source). Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
- Google moves to dismiss indie artists' lawsuit over Lyria 3 AI training, arguing they licensed their music to YouTube, Music Business Worldwide. Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
- Suno confirms v6 model was trained on creations from users as it blasts latest Sony and Universal lawsuit, Music Business Worldwide. Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
- "The death of Suno": Reddit users have turned against Suno after v6 model update, MusicTech. Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
- Udio taps content security firm BuyDRM to secure its AI music walled garden, Music Business Worldwide. Accessed 23 Oct 2026.
Researched with AI assistance, written and checked by WATMM Desk.
Published by the company behind Veena. Disclosures