Suno bought the top AI music spot with licenses; ACE Music v1 just took it, 1,160 to 1,144
Suno bought the top of the AI music chart with licensed Warner, BMG and Believe catalogs; six weeks later a challenger holds it, and that challenger's model family is going free. The pricing test lands on Spotify's planned $4 to $5 remix tier and on what the majors can charge for AI training data.
Vincent Jiangthree-minute read
A 16-point lead, inside the error bars
ACE Music v1, the first full-song model from ACE Studio, a company founded in 2018 to synthesise singing voices, took first place on November 11 on Artificial Analysis' blind-listening chart for vocal AI music: 1,160 Elo to 1,144 for Suno~$2.45B — Suno, private, latest valuation ~$2.45B v6 1. Voters hear paired tracks generated from the same prompt, model names hidden, and pick a favorite 1. Sixteen points is roughly a 52/48 edge, and the 95% confidence intervals overlap: a lead, not a rout 2. Suno still leads the separate instrumental board at 1,148, on which ACE Music v1 is not ranked 3.
A challenger with no label deal tops the vocal board
ACE Music v1 leads Suno v6 by 16 Elo points, inside overlapping intervals
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| ACE Music v1 | 1,160 Elo |
| Suno v6 | 1,144 Elo |
| Suno v6-mini | 1,132 Elo |
| Mureka V9.5 | 1,101 Elo |
| Eleven Music v2.5 | 1,016 Elo |
The top spot was bought with licenses
Suno launched v6 on September 9 and retired every earlier model the same day, rebuilding on licensed catalogs from Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe, with a share of the subscription fee flowing back to those labels 42.
That is what lets Suno sell clean commercial rights to its more than 2 million subscribers, who produced $300 million of annual revenue at last count, on a $5.4 billion private valuation 46. The Inference priced Suno's unresolved catalog disputes at $9 billion in September (Suno's clean restart just collided with its $9 billion past) 46.
The lawsuits continue anyway: on November 6, Elvis Presley's rights holders sued over 859 works, seeking up to $128.85 million in statutory damages plus more than $50 million under Tennessee's ELVIS Act, and Eight Mile Style, the publisher of 269 Eminem compositions, sought up to $40.35 million 56.
The challenger's family is going free
The flagship stays closed, and neither ACE Music v1 nor Suno v6 has a public API 2. But ACE Studio and StepFun already give away ACE-Step 1.5, a 4-billion-parameter open-weights model with commercial-use rights, and promise to open-source ACE Music v1 Flash, a lighter build balancing quality against hardware, in late 2026 78. Two caveats carry the weight: Flash is not promised at parity, and ACE has documented no licensing posture of its own, so the free weights may carry the exact liability Suno paid to shed 27.
When a license becomes a clearance fee
The Financial Times reported on October 30 that Spotify−1.90% — Spotify, down 1.90 percent as of its last quote is weighing a $4 to $5 monthly add-on for AI covers and remixes in early 2027, on deals with Universal, Merlin, Believe and Kobalt, with each artist opting in 9. That price assumes consent is worth paying for.
The board now shows a licensed flagship inside the error bars of a challenger whose sibling is already free, and for Warner Music Group, Sony+0.72% — Sony, up 0.72 percent as of its last quote and Universal, a substitute priced at zero sits one release away. A license stops being a premium the moment it becomes a clearance fee. Watch where Flash lands on the board, what Spotify finally charges, and the first ruling in the November cases.
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