Jason Isbell Leads Proposed Class Action Suit Against Suno

Country star Jason Isbell, Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven frontman David Lowery, jazz saxophonist Eduardo “Ed” Calle and blues singer-songwriter Guy Forsyth have filed a proposed class action against Suno.

The complaint:

• While previous lawsuits against Suno have focused on alleged copyright infringement, Isbell and co’s centers on the alleged unauthorized use of musicians’ identities – including publicity rights and, in Illinois, biometric information.

• The plaintiffs claim Suno offers users the ability to use musicians’ names “as a retrieval key,” and that by entering a musician’s name the system generates a “musician-based output.”

• They allege that Suno’s purported guardrails preventing users from doing this can be easily bypassed, allowing users to “generate identity-evocative output on command.”

• The plaintiffs also allege that Suno collected, captured, stored or used voiceprints or vocal identifiers from certain sound recordings without the informed written consent required under Illinois law.

• They argue that the ability to generate output associated with particular musicians enhances the “usefulness, appeal, and commercial value” of Suno’s product.

Key distinction:

• The complaint specifies that the publicity and identity allegations are not copyright matters, nor do they concern ownership of a genre.

• It adds: “The claim is narrower and older than that: no one may commercially exploit another’s right of publicity in their name and identity.”

• The plaintiffs also claim the profile of the musician is irrelevant, and that they don’t need to “be a superstar to have their identity appropriated.”

• In that regard, the suit aims to establish subclasses covering other musicians “whose names are or have been accepted as prompts in Suno,” as well as an Illinois subclass concerning musicians whose voiceprints or vocal identifiers were allegedly used without the required consent.