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Can a Label Sign an AI Song?

Yes, it has happened at least twice already, with one deal reportedly worth about three million dollars. So, if you found your way here wondering whether a label can sign an AI song, then you should know that the answer is: yes, they can, and they have done that legally, and the money flows. The long version goes into strange legal specifics of what exactly the labels are acquiring when they sign an AI song—which is quite different from what they purchase signing a human artist—and I can say that having spent years releasing music through various distributors, discussing splits, and experimenting with AI myself.

Labels Are Signing People Who Operate Machines

And, believe it or not, that makes all the difference when it comes to copyright, royalties, radio, and how all of that will survive in the lawsuits still working their way through the courts. So, let me explain what happened, what the deals contained, and what does it mean for you if you make AI music and wait for a call from the label’s A&R.

Deals That Have Happened

July 2025 was the month when the independent record label Hallwood Media owned by former Interscope executive Neil Jacobson signed a creator called imoliver, whom the industry describes as the first AI record deal ever, or, to be more precise, as the deal with the first “music designer”. And that “music designer” is Oliver McCann, a 37-year-old visual designer who gained fame thanks to the Suno platform that can turn text into songs, generating over three million streams before Hallwood approached him. The point here is that Hallwood never described itself as signing a robot. They described themselves as signing a human with taste, who happens to design music with the help of AI.

And the second one was a deal that made the industry sit up straight. In September 2025, Hallwood Media signed Xania Monet, the AI-powered R&B act, after a serious bidding war that reportedly went up to three million dollars. Monet is not a person. She is an act created by Telisha Nikki Jones, a poet from Mississippi who writes lyrics herself and creates recordings using Suno’s machine. And this act gave it all away in its early days: when the label executives called a Zoom meeting with the act, Monet joined it without video and didn’t sing since there was nobody to put on camera, as Billboard reported.

The pace has not slowed down since: Billboard’s tally counts at least six AI- and AI-assisted acts that debuted on its charts in late 2025, ranging from country (Breaking Rust and Cain Walker) to Christian music (Juno Skye) and rock (Enlly Blue). And the milestone moment happened when Monet’s single “How Was I Supposed to Know?” became the first-known AI song to debut on a Billboard radio airplay chart, entering the Adult R&B Airplay survey at number 30. Yes, the real program directors from the real radio stations decided to play a voice that does not exist.

So, yes. A label can sign an AI song. And the more interesting thing is what, exactly, do they buy in this case.

What Exactly a Label Is Buying

As my practical experience kicks in here, I can say that a traditional record deal rests on several assumptions that are completely shattered when talking about AI music.

When a label signs a human artist, they acquire or license rights in sound recordings, possibly a share of the compositions behind these songs, and they invest in the person himself or herself – their touring, image, longevity, and growing catalog. When Hallwood Media signs Xania Monet, they sign Telisha Jones. The voice, the “artist”, is a property without a body, without touring, and, most importantly, without clear ownership.

And the United States Copyright Office is very clear on this one. In its January 2025 report on copyrightability, it has stated that human authorship is still the dividing line: AI-assisted works can be protected if a human contributed a meaningful creative expression to them, but purely machine-generated works are not copyrightable, and prompts alone cannot make something copyrightable. In her discussion, the Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter emphasized the centrality of human creativity, and Skadden notes that a human can earn copyright in AI-generated work by creative selection, arrangement, or modification of that content.

So, if we apply it to an AI song, we’ll get the weird and convoluted picture. Jones writes her own lyrics, so the lyrics are protected, and this is usual human authorship. But the compositions and the recording that Suno creates based on those lyrics are somewhere in the grey zone at best. If a court or the Copyright Office decided that the human contribution to the actual recording was not meaningful enough, this recording would become unprotectable, which means that anybody could freely copy, remix, and sell it without any possibility of legal action from the label’s side. A label investing millions in a catalog that they may not be able to defend is either very brave or betting on something else entirely.

The thing that I suspect, and I’m not alone here, is that this is partially a bet on the human operator and partially a publicity stunt. In its analysis of Monet signing, Billboard has cited industry experts who suggested that such deals may be as much about winning the AI news cycle as about the music. Hallwood can be the label of record for the AI era. Telisha Jones gets life-changing money for a project that she created in her kitchen. Whether those songs will prove themselves to be valuable assets is another question.

Lawsuits That Are Going On While It’s Happening

Now for the part that every piece about this subject misses in its breathlessness. Every signing of an AI artist has happened at the time when the tool that made this music was facing lawsuits from the industry leaders.

In June 2024, Universal Music Group, Sony, and Warner, working together through the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), sued Suno and its competitor Udio for training their models on copyrighted sound recordings without permission, alleging copyright infringement at an enormous scale. The defense of Suno is the claim that such training is a transformative fair use. However, the United States courts have not heard this claim yet.

What they heard instead were settlement negotiations and licensing deals that told them quite a lot about the industry’s perspective. Universal settled with Udio in October 2025. Warner settled with Udio and, in Thanksgiving week, settled with Suno, licensing it to launch new models that would be trained exclusively on licensed music in 2 to replace its current models. Sony has not settled with anyone as of the date of writing. At the same time, Universal’s lawsuit against Suno is still ongoing. And all three majors have signed a separate licensing deal with Klay Vision, a startup that would create AI music products on licensed music catalog.

Two conclusions emerge from this mess, and both of them are important if you’re trying to give an honest answer to the title question.

First, the ground underneath every existing AI song is not stable. In case the training was indeed copyright infringement, and a court decided so, every song generated with unlicensed models carries a stain that no distribution deal can clean off it. As Virginie Berger pointed out in Forbes, partial settlements have protected majors that could afford lawsuits, while independent artists whose works were also included in the training data were left with a class action, including the one from the country artist Tony Justice. A label signing an AI act is deliberately building on this unstable ground. Hallwood has decided to do so. I wouldn’t expect every label to do the same.

Second, the settlements push the future of AI music into the hands of labels: licensed models, download caps, and revenues flowing back to rights holders. Wild West era, where a free account could bring you a chart hit, is over. Suno promises to replace its current models with licensed ones in 2026. Udio is pivoting to a platform for fan remixes built together with Warner and Universal instead of the endless music generator. If your business model was to ride the current tools to a record deal, know that these tools themselves are about to change.

Radio, charts, and backlash against AI music

Commercial signals about the popularity of AI music are genuinely mixed, and anyone who says that this music is either a fad or a unstoppable force is selling you a narrative.

On one hand, Monet topped R&B Digital Song Sales chart, appeared on two Billboard charts (“Let Go, Let God”), received attention in radio airplay, with Billboard estimating that her catalog had earned over fifty thousand dollars in streams in the United States alone. Breaking Rust’s “Walk My Walk” was among the most downloaded country songs in November 2025, and AI acts were regularly appearing on Billboard charts in late 2025. People are not just curious; some of them are willing to pay.

On the other hand, human artists like Kehlani and SZA pushed back against Monet, and country radio responded with cold shoulder. Billboard reported that terrestrial country stations rejected to add Breaking Rust, and the radio consultant called it a smart move. Those charts that AI acts dominated are relatively thin markets where a few thousand downloads can top the charts, flattering AI acts with novelty-oriented audience. Streaming and airplay, where a sustained attention of human beings is important, are much harder for AI acts to reach. I’ve seen the novelty-driven acts top the sales charts and disappear in a month; AI acts do not seem to behave differently once the news cycle moves on.

Moreover, there is a definitional war going on that will affect all of that. SAG-AFTRA’s 2024 agreement with the major labels defines an artist, singer, and royalty artist as a human only. Recording Academy said that fully AI-generated music is ineligible for Grammy, although AI-assisted works can be considered. And in July 2026, RIAA, IFPI, Recording Academy, and SAG-AFTRA jointly proposed a voluntary labeling of the AI music on streaming services: a black AI badge for fully AI-generated songs and a smaller badge for AI-assisted ones, inspired by the existing explicit lyrics tag. Context is quite telling: Deezer has reported that AI-generated songs took 44 percent of all uploads to its service, while Apple Music has indicated that around one-third of its uploads are entirely AI-generated. Industry is not arguing about existence of AI music at a scale; it’s arguing about how to mark that music.

Platforms are not neutral either

Even if a label signs an AI song, it has to be released on streaming services, and these services have specific rules as well.

Spotify spent 2025 establishing lines: it has removed more than 75 million spammy tracks from its service, implemented a policy against unauthorized AI voice clones, introduced filters against mass uploads and artificially short tracks, and supported development of industry-wide standard of disclosure of AI involvement in a song’s credits through DDEX metadata, a technical format used for passing information about songs between companies. Important thing here is that Spotify is not banning AI music: it explicitly said that responsible usage of AI technology is welcome, and enforcement will target fraud, impersonation, and sloppy use. Deezer attached AI-detection flags to fully AI-generated tracks, and it reported that up to 70 percent of plays of such tracks exhibited fraud pattern, which is filtered out from the royalty payments.

This cuts both ways for a label. An AI act professionally managed and promoted like Monet is exactly the kind of “responsible” AI music that these platforms say they will host. But the introduction of the industry-standard AI disclosure badges will lead to the fact that listeners will start seeing the AI label before they click play, and nobody knows what the effect of such labeling will be. I would predict that for background genres this effect is going to be small; for genres that rely on authenticity, like country or gospel, it is going to be very high. It’s no accident that the strongest chart performances of the AI acts came from genres with strong need for authenticity, fuelled by audiences that did not know what they were listening to.

What This Means For You If You Make AI Music

If you are the person wondering whether a label can sign your AI song and has an active account on Suno, here’s the honest look into the business of AI music, complete with real numbers.

  • Get the commercial tier before you release anything. Suno’s free tier does not include the right for commercial use. Commercial tier is ten dollars per month (eight dollars per month if annual subscription), providing 2,500 monthly credits, around 500 songs if a song requires about five credits to be generated. Commercial tier provides the commercial rights for songs that you create while being on this tier. Premier tier is thirty dollars per month (twenty-four if annual subscription), providing 10,000 monthly credits and giving you access to Suno Studio. The rights are forward-looking; songs created on free tier cannot be retroactively monetized by moving to commercial tier later. Several guides note that Suno does not guarantee copyright vesting in your output. You’re buying permission from Suno; not copyright.
  • Write your own lyrics. It’s the single move with the highest leverage here, exactly what Telisha Jones did. Independent copyright in lyrics that were written by a human protects your work even if the music is machine-generated, giving you a chance to protect and license something even in case when the recording is unprotected. It also gives you something that a label needs in an AI deal: human counterpart who owns something.
  • Build an audience before you dream of signing. Every successful AI act started with the hard work. McCann managed to reach three million streams on Suno’s platform before Hallwood called him. Jones grew Monet’s audience – over 140,000 Instagram followers – consistently releasing music and developing the persona. Labels do not search for prompts; they search for evidence of demand.
  • Disclose your tracks and distribute through platforms that allow that. Policies of distributors vary and are often changed fast; some large distributors reject fully AI-generated content outright, so you have to check current terms before you upload your music. Fill the disclosure field when there’s one available: industry-wide labeling system is coming, and hiding AI involvement is going to result in takedowns quicker than proper disclosure.
  • A warning: don’t build your catalog on platforms and models that are about to disappear. With Suno’s current models replaced by the licensed ones in 2026, and free-tier downloads limited to 500, treat everything that you’ve made so far as provisional. Export your tracks, save your prompts and timestamps as evidence of your creative process, and be prepared that licensing fees will increase prices for your generation when economic conditions change.

Can a Label Sign an AI Song or Not?

Yes, they can, they did, and they will again. But let’s stop for a minute and understand that what is actually happening behind all the buzz: what labels are really signing is not an AI song but a human being who works in a certain way – lyricist, curator, persona developer who uses generation the way producers once used samplers. Three-million-dollar price tag on Monet is not the price of an AI song; it’s the price of Telisha Jones’s pen, her audience, and unique position in an era when every label fears to miss the next platform shift.

To be honest as a person who has seen several industry gold rushes happen, I have to say that the ceiling for pure AI acts is lower than hype suggests, because the two factors that multiply value in music careers – live performance and parasocial relationship to a real person – are exactly what an AI act cannot deliver. But the floor is higher than skepticism admits, because functional listening, playlists, background moods, and devotional music don’t care who or what made the track, and that is quite a large chunk of streaming.

Here’s the single actionable step you can do this week: take one song idea, write the lyrics yourself, generate music on commercial tier of Suno, register your lyrics, and release the track with proper AI disclosure through a distributor that allows it. This cycle alone will teach you more about whether your AI song can be signed by a label than a month of reading articles like this, mine included.

Sources

Common questions

Can a record label sign an AI song?

Yes, it has happened. Hallwood Media signed imoliver, an AI music designer, in July 2025, then signed AI R&B act Xania Monet in September 2025 after a bidding war reportedly reaching three million dollars. In every case, the label is signing the human behind the AI.

Who is Xania Monet?

An AI-powered R&B act created by Telisha Nikki Jones, a poet from Mississippi who writes the lyrics herself and generates recordings with Suno. Monet has no body, joined label Zoom calls without video, and her single became the first known AI song to debut on a Billboard radio airplay chart.

What does a label actually own when it signs an AI act?

The human-authored parts, like the lyrics Jones writes, are protected by copyright. The AI-generated compositions and recordings sit in a legal grey zone at best, and if courts decide the human contribution wasn't meaningful, anyone could copy and sell them without the label being able to sue.

Are AI songs copyrightable?

Not if purely machine-generated. The US Copyright Office's January 2025 report holds that human authorship is the dividing line: AI-assisted works can be protected where a human contributed meaningful creative expression through selection, arrangement, or modification, but prompts alone earn nothing.

Do the Suno and Udio lawsuits affect signed AI songs?

Yes. Every AI signing happened while the tools faced infringement suits from the majors. Universal and Warner have settled with licensing deals, but Sony hasn't, and Universal's case against Suno continues. If training is ruled infringement, songs from unlicensed models carry a stain no distribution deal removes.

How is radio and the industry reacting to AI artists?

Mixed. Monet reached an airplay chart and topped R&B Digital Song Sales, but country radio refused to add Breaking Rust, artists like Kehlani and SZA pushed back, SAG-AFTRA defines artists as human only, and fully AI-generated music is ineligible for Grammys.

Will AI music be labeled on streaming services?

Likely. In July 2026, RIAA, IFPI, the Recording Academy, and SAG-AFTRA jointly proposed voluntary badges: a black AI badge for fully AI-generated songs and a smaller one for AI-assisted works, modeled on the explicit lyrics tag. Deezer reports AI songs at 44 percent of uploads.

What should I do if I want a label to sign my AI music?

Generate only on Suno's commercial tier at 10 dollars a month since free-tier songs can't be retroactively monetized, write your own lyrics for real copyright leverage, build an audience first since labels look for demand rather than prompts, and disclose AI involvement at distribution.

Is there a future for pure AI acts?

The ceiling is lower than hype suggests because live performance and parasocial connection to a real person are exactly what an AI act cannot deliver. But the floor is higher than skeptics admit, because playlists, background moods, and functional listening don't care who made the track.