Suno.wiki

Protecting Your Music

by Portabob

Intro/Disclaimer

I came into Suno not knowing literally anything about music or copyright or intellectual property. This is some of the things I believe I have “discovered” on my journey. /d correct any mis-statements I make.

First off, it seems you have an implicit copyright to any creative work you make without you taking any action at all. You make it, it’s yours. Now Suno creates the music for anything created with Suno, so you would have a hard time proving that is your creative property, but being on a paid plan, Suno-corp [placeholder] gives you the rights to anything created with their process. The law and copyright and AI is an evolving topic, so I will not go into that. But if you wrote the lyrics yourself, you can definitely declare ownership of those lyrics and use them to issue copyright strikes.

That said, literally anyone can upload an MP3 to a music distribution site and monetize that MP3 as long as it is not already in their database of released songs. It is up to you to protect your intellectual property.

So, I recommend document all the things. If you write your lyrics in a notepad, keep the raw versions as well as the progressive ones. If you write in Word or Notepad++ or whatever, do not forget to save the file. You want a record of your creative process which proves your ownership of the final product. As much as I love the delete button in Suno, over-utilizing it might compromise your ability to prove your creation. Do you need 200 drafts of a song in Suno? I don’t know, but think about it when you decide what to keep versus throw away.

I also upload an unlisted copy of the finished .mp4 from Suno to a YouTube channel. I keep that link for later.

Protection

Ok, one thing you can do to protect your music is to Shazam all the things. What you want is for your Shazam to go through the three levels of “Searching”, “Expanding”, “One more try” and to come back “No match”. Or to come back with a match that is clearly not your song. The thing of this is: Shazam keeps searching for matches to any unknown song periodically in the background. If you ever get a notification on your phone “Great news! We found a match to a song you previously searched for.” It might not be great news if you didn’t upload and monetize your own music.

Another thing and this is more effective is to use a service like DistroLock https://distrolock.com/ You can upload your music to DistroLock and it registers it with the music database that companies check before accepting a music upload. (Important fact: companies ONLY check when someone uploads a song. If *nefarious person* has already uploaded a copy of your song, this will not protect it. But the service does work. I accidentally copyright struck myself by uploading my music after locking it. (It was easily remedied by responding to the strike.) I believe this service is completely free. It is definitely free if you are a DistroKid customer with a paid account.

Copyright Strikes

The copyright strike system is largely automated. And it’s not particularly fast. If your involved in it, you’re not likely to be happy. Try to remember that the various companies don’t have any actual stake in who wins, it’s not personal.

Receiving Copyright Strikes

You might receive a copyright strike notice. This is your opportunity to state why you believe this was wrong. Maybe it’s as simple as “Oops, I locked the song on DistroLock before I uploaded it to you. Sorry” Maybe it’s more nefarious. My current answer is “I am the original author of the lyrics to this work. I contracted the creation of the musical portion to a company and created the music in a collaborative, iterative process. They transferred all rights to this music to me after the creation was complete. I can provide documentation of the creative process.” I don’t mention A.I. but I don’t lie. So far that has worked in 100% of all one copyright strike I have received.

Sending Copyright Strikes

If some jackass is monetizing your music, you have to strike against them. See “it is up to you to protect your intellectual property” above.

  • You have to strike each place you find your music individually. There is not one central place you can issue to to hit everyone.
  • Each company does their own thing. My experience is Soundcloud and Spotify take the music down while investigating. Apple leaves the music up. That may be due to wording on the strikes I issued, YMMV.

In the reason, my current go is: “I am the original author of the lyrics to this work. I contracted the creation of the musical portion to a company and created the music in a collaborative, iterative process. They transferred all rights to this music to me after the creation was complete. I can provide documentation of the creative process. {Person X} is not affiliated with me or the corporation that created the music.” The person you are striking WILL see this text, so do not provide personal info.

You may be requested to provide a link to a valid copyright version of the work. That unlisted YouTube video you created above might be useful here. I’d be willing to provide a link to the same from the Suno page, but I prefer to keep that as an emergency last measure in case the nefarious jerk gets that link and strikes it. I’d rather Suno not get a strike and have to delete the proof of my original creation.