Who owns the master when AI generates your music?

The clauses that decide it

Skip the marketing page and read four things in the terms of any AI music platform before you release a track:

• The ownership clause. Does the platform assign output to you, license it to you, or keep it? An assignment transfers rights; a license can be conditional or revocable.
• Tier dependence. Many platforms grant commercial rights only on paid plans. Check what happens to tracks you made on a free plan, and to old tracks if you cancel.
• The license you grant back. Most services take a license over what you upload and generate, to operate the service. Read how broad it is and whether it survives after you leave.
• Attribution. Some tiers require crediting the platform on anything you publish.

Suede Studio Music’s terms, plainly

Suede Studio Music is a paid membership, and the ownership answer is the same on every tier:

• Every track is 100% commercial rights, your master, no revenue split, and no clawback. What you make leaves with you.
• Ownership does not change by tier. Artist ($29/mo), Pro ($49/mo), and Label ($99/mo) all include full ownership and stems; the tiers differ in monthly quota and roster size, not in rights.
• No attribution requirement on anything you publish.
• Full stems ship with every render, so you can rework, re-mix, and master the track in your own DAW — your workflow is not locked inside the platform.
• Distribution is separate and flat: standalone Suede Distro is $7.99/mo, not a percentage of your royalties.

One honest caveat that applies to every platform on this page, including this one: a platform’s terms decide the contract between you and the platform. Whether a copyright exists in a generated track is a matter of copyright law, which in the US requires human authorship. The way to strengthen your claim is real human authorship — your melody, your lyrics, your arrangement, your performance on top of the generated material. No terms of service can manufacture a copyright, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

What Suno’s terms say (as of August 2026)

Suno’s terms of service (last updated March 26, 2026, read on August 18, 2026) draw a hard line between tiers. For paid subscribers: “Suno hereby assigns to you all of its right, title and interest in and to any Output owned by Suno and generated from Submissions made by you through the Service during the term of your paid-tier subscription.” Free-tier users, by contrast, agree to use outputs “solely for your lawful, internal, personal and non-commercial purposes, provided that you give attribution credit to Suno in each case.”

Two more clauses worth reading in full on their live page: users grant Suno a broad, perpetual license over content on the service, and Suno itself states that “due to the nature of machine learning, Suno makes no representation or warranty to you that any copyright will vest in any Output.” None of this is hidden — it is stated plainly in their terms — but it is tier-dependent, and the details matter if you plan to release. Read the current version before publishing anything; terms change.

What about Udio and everyone else?

We attempted to read Udio’s terms of service for this page on August 18, 2026 and could not capture a stable public copy to quote, so we won’t characterize them — secondhand summaries of ownership terms are exactly the thing this page exists to warn against. Read Udio’s current terms directly, and put the same four questions to them — and to any other generator — that this page opened with: who owns output, does it depend on tier, what license do you grant back, and is attribution required.

Questions artists actually ask

If owning the master outright is the deciding factor for you, Suede Studio Music was built on that premise — and if another platform’s current terms serve your situation better, use that one. The only wrong move is releasing a track under terms you haven’t read.