A PR battle appears to be breaking out between the world’s most prominent AI music company and the world’s largest music rights company.
On Monday (February 2), ex-major label executive Paul Sinclair, now Chief Music Officer of AI music firm Suno, penned a lengthy post-Grammy Week LinkedIn memo entitled “Open Studios, not walled gardens” that takes direct aim at the approach championed by Universal Music Group in its recent AI licensing agreements.
UMG was the first major to settle its litigation with Suno rival Udio (in October 2025), alongside a licensing deal for a new AI platform set to launch in 2026.
The concept of a “walled garden” was introduced within that announcement – a model where AI-generated music cannot be downloaded or distributed outside the platform. Udio disabled downloads, with users given a 48-hour grace period to retrieve previously created tracks before the walls went up.
Warner Music Group followed with its own Udio settlement in November, implementing similar restrictions.
But when WMG then signed a separate deal with Suno later that month, the terms proved notably different. Suno retained much of its core functionality, including the ability for users to create songs and download them.
Just over a month after that deal was announced, in his annual memo to staff, UMG Chairman and CEO Sir Lucian Grainge appeared to warn against firms “validating business models that fail to respect artists’ work and creativity, and promote the exponential growth of AI slop on streaming platforms.”
Michael Nash, Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Officer at UMG, explained the company’s position in further detail during an appearance on Billboard‘s On The Record podcast last week, and outlined the walled garden concept in stark terms.
“The concept [of a walled garden] is to set up through AI a component of the service for deep interaction with the artists and the content, but not to create derivatives that you then take off of the platform and post all over your socials and post on Spotify and Amazon Music, and Apple,” he said.
He argued that by doing so, you “effectively use artists’ content and their brand to create derivatives where you’re going to compete with the artist on other platforms”.
“The concept [of a walled garden] is to set up through AI a component of the service for deep interaction with the artists and the content, but not to create derivatives that you then take off of the platform.”
Michael Nash, UMG
Nash characterized the walled garden approach as essential to protecting artist interests, and pretty much confirmed it was a deciding factor in why UMG has not reached a settlement with Suno.
When asked directly why UMG hadn’t done a deal with Suno, Nash said he had to “be careful” because of ongoing litigation, but hinted that if it were a rhetorical question, he “would say yes” to the walled garden being a key differentiator.
Nash added: “If you’re looking at what is the point of differentiation with respect to the deals we’ve done and the partnerships that we haven’t entered into, foundationally it’s really about ethicality.”
Meanwhile, Paul Sinclair’s position, articulated in his LinkedIn post, advocates for what he terms “open studios” – an approach that maintains creative freedom while still operating within licensed frameworks.
“If we had tried to lock music into closed systems over the last 25 years, we wouldn’t have streaming as we know it – the world music library, available in your pocket,” he argued.
“We wouldn’t have billions of people legally engaging with music on platforms driven by user-generated content. We wouldn’t have the explosion of global genres, bedroom producers creating Hot 100 hits, or fans becoming creators in their own right.”
“If we had tried to lock music into closed systems over the last 25 years, we wouldn’t have streaming as we know it – the world music library, available in your pocket.”
Paul Sinclair, Suno
Since joining Suno, Sinclair has spoken publicly about building a “healthy music ecosystem” and “empowering” artists through AI tools rather than restricting user capabilities.
The philosophical split reflects a broader tension within the music industry about how to balance copyright protection with technological innovation. As MBW founder Tim Ingham noted in his analysis of the Warner-Suno deal: “Why would [WMG CEO Robert] Kyncl grant Suno this freedom, rather than locking the service into a walled garden like Udio?”
The answer, he suggested, may lie in concerns about ceding the AI music market to unregulated international competitors.
Reddit threads following the Warner-Suno announcement captured user sentiment, with comments warning: “Soon there will be a model from China to fill the gap.”
For Nash, however, the walled garden principle remains fundamental. Speaking to Rolling Stone following the Udio settlement, he described Suno’s open approach as risking ‘direct cannibalisation’ of artists and called it ‘an unsustainable status quo’.”
The public disagreement between two executives, one representing the interests of a recorded music giant, the other an ex-major label exec representing the interests of an AI music unicorn, highlights the lack of consensus on how AI music platforms should operate.
While both camps agree that licensing is preferable to litigation, they diverge sharply on the terms of that licensed future.
Suno, valued at $2.45 billion following its recent $250 million funding round, appears to be betting that a more permissive approach will prove both commercially viable and attractive to artists.
Meanwhile, UMG and Sony Music continue to pursue legal action against the platform, suggesting a settlement remains distant. Globally, Suno is also still being sued by Germany’s GEMA and Denmark’s Koda.
As the industry awaits the launch of Udio’s new licensed platform and Suno’s revised models later this year, the walled garden debate looks set to intensify. What’s clear is that the resolution of this philosophical divide will shape how millions of users interact with AI music creation, and how artists are compensated for years to come.
Sinclair, who joined Suno in July 2025 after nearly two decades at Warner Music Group, described Grammy Week as an “amazing 6 days” in Los Angeles, highlighting “legendary artists, rising songwriters, producers, managers, lawyers, technologists, all packed into a few (long) days, all talking about the same thing: what happens next”. He also mentioned “new partners” on his list of highlights from Grammy Week, but didn’t name them.
“Underneath the parties, creative writing camps, and endless meetings, one theme kept coming up in almost every conversation: we are standing at another major technology inflection point for music, perhaps the biggest,” he wrote.Music Business Worldwide
