![\"Suno](\"https:\/\/mubert.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/illustration-1-light-39-1024x1024.webp\")
![\"Suno](\"https:\/\/mubert.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/illustration-1-dark-39-1024x1024.webp\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nA judge lets the labels question Suno’s investor under oath<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Lawyers for UMG and Sony filed their motion on Friday, October 23, Music Business Worldwide<\/a> reports. Magistrate Judge Paul G. Levenson granted it on Monday. Three days, start to finish. The order lets the labels serve a deposition subpoena on Gong and question her within 30 days. A deposition is sworn testimony taken outside the courtroom: lawyers ask the questions, a court reporter types every answer, and nobody gets to delete anything afterwards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Digital Music News<\/a> reports the same timeline in case 1:24-cv-11611. It adds that Menlo or Gong could still try a motion to quash. That’s a request to cancel the subpoena.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suno did not oppose the motion. It did ask for a statement of its position in the filing, and that statement is a small masterpiece of legal shrugging. Suno said it had kept to every deadline and “believes those deadlines should bind all parties equally”. Then it deferred to the court. It “takes no position on the subpoena’s propriety”, it added, and will not limit any objection Gong or Menlo raise, “including by motion to quash.” (Translation: we’re not objecting, but if someone else wanted to, we wouldn’t stop them.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of that statement mentions the Suno fair use defense. That defense is the whole reason the labels want Gong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fair use is the part of US copyright law that sometimes allows use of a protected work without permission. Four factors. They sit in Section 107 of the Copyright Act<\/a>, and the fourth one, the one this fight is about, is “the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work”. Put simply: does the new thing replace the old thing people used to pay for?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suno’s answer has been no. The Suno fair use defense argues that its output creates something fundamentally new rather than a substitute for recorded music. MBW made the point in an open letter to Suno CEO Mikey Shulman back in March. One line stung. It read: “Your own investor just told the world it is a replacement.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The labels now say the same thing in a court filing. Gong’s post, they argue, “bears directly on the effect of Suno on the market” for their recordings, and thus “on the fourth fair use factor”, which happens to be where the Suno defense lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of these steps mention the Suno fair use defense by name. Every one leads back to it. The story starts with a funding round and then runs through what feels like a thousand emails between lawyers, with dates taken from the motion as reported by MBW unless noted otherwise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A tweet is not market data. One person’s listening habits prove very little about a market, and if this case turned on a single investor’s playlist, we would worry about the legal system in general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But this isn’t any listener. She was a principal at the firm that led a $250 million round. Presumably that firm looked hard at usage. Menlo’s own announcement says listeners usually find Suno through songs other people share. So her post sits right on the question the fourth factor asks, which is the whole problem for the Suno fair use defense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Notice what Menlo offered a witness on: the posting and the deletion. Not the listening. The listening is the part the labels want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We’ll admit some sympathy for the complaint itself. Plenty of us have opened a streaming app, scrolled past the same twelve recommendations, closed it again, and then opened it ten minutes later hoping the algorithm had had a change of heart. It hadn’t. Fixing that would be a nicer job than being deposed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The bigger fights are over numbers, not posts. According to Digital Music News, the AI side wants play-volume data from the Mechanical Licensing Collective to push back on claims of royalty dilution and market replacement. UMG and Sony, meanwhile, want documents on DistroKid’s AI-detection tool. They are also after Lightspeed Venture Partners, which led Suno’s Series B and has moved to quash. One deleted post won’t decide the Suno fair use defense. Still, it hands the labels a human example to set beside the spreadsheets. Judges remember those.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nothing changes this week. Nobody has ruled on fair use, the deposition hasn’t happened, and a motion to quash could still delay it. Still, your Suno catalogue now leans a little on how an ex-investor explains her playlist. We’ve watched that kind of risk turn into real takedowns before: see how DistroKid pulled songs over UMG’s lawsuit<\/a> and the Reservoir complaint covering 1,050 songs<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some homework is worth doing now. Read your tool’s terms on ownership and commercial use. Save your prompts, dates and project files. Then find out where the tool’s sound actually comes from, because that is now a question people answer under oath, with a court reporter typing. If the Suno fair use defense loses, those notes are what you’ll want on hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Suno fair use defense rests on the market question<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What happened so far<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
How a funding round and one post started it<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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![\"Woman](\"https:\/\/mubert.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/illustration-2-light-39-1024x1024.webp\")
![\"Woman](\"https:\/\/mubert.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/illustration-2-dark-39-1024x1024.webp\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nHow the subpoena fight ran past the deadline<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Why one deleted post matters for the Suno fair use defense<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What the Suno fair use defense means for people releasing AI music<\/h2>\n\n\n\n