Udio’s Starstruck AI music app to feature four creation modes

Udio’s licensed AI music app will be called Starstruck, with four creation modes for fans (Report)

May 25, 2026 By Mandy Dalugdug

Udio ‘s forthcoming licensed AI music platform will be called Starstruck .

That’s according to Water & Music , the music-tech research firm founded by Cherie Hu , which reported on details shared during a private webinar that Udio co-hosted with Kobalt on April 30.

During the webinar, Udio CEO Andrew Sanchez reportedly gave a live demo of the app and answered questions from Kobalt members, with Kobalt CEO Laurent Hubert and Chief Digital Officer Bob Bruderman also contributing.

According to the Water & Music report, Starstruck will be a mobile-first app aimed at everyday fans rather than professional artists or producers.

It will offer four modes for users to interact with music from opted-in artists and songwriters:

- The Cover mode would allow users to generate a version of a song performed in the style of a different artist – “for instance, hypothetically, a Charli XCX -style cover of a Taylor Swift song,” the report said. - Reimagine “keeps the lyrics but rewrites the musical composition entirely.” - Remix “applies genre or style shifts to existing recordings.” - And Create lets “users write their own lyrics and pair them with a selected artist’s voice, subject to guardrails around topic, language, and style.”

Whichever mode users pick, they will always have to select a specific artist and song, according to the report.

Generic, unattributed AI music will not be available on the platform.

During the webinar Q&A , Sanchez explained that the generated recording would be owned by the rights holder of the participating artist – which could be the artist’s label, publisher, or the artist themselves via their distributor, the report said.

In other words, the fan would not own what they create on Starstruck ; they would be paying for the right to create and listen inside Udio ‘s controlled environment.

On the publishing side, Kobalt ‘s Bruderman said on the webinar that “given the overall structure of this deal… the songwriter [will be] paid significantly more than they are in the traditional streaming construct.”

Water & Music reported that the app will be subscription-based across two tiers – Standard and Pro – each capped by a different number of monthly creations.

Sanchez also floated a more campaign-oriented version of the tiering model, in which higher-tier users could potentially get earlier access to remix new releases from participating artists, the report added.

Every creation on Starstruck will live exclusively inside the app’s “walled garden” – meaning songs cannot be exported or distributed elsewhere.

According to the report, Sanchez described three layers of enforcement to protect the walled garden: stream encryption to make ripping harder, inaudible watermarking on every output, and fingerprinting so distributors and streaming services can check uploaded tracks against Starstruck creations and block any matches.

As Water & Music noted, that last layer presents a coordination challenge as much as a technical one: Udio ‘s walled garden will only be as strong as the wider music distribution ecosystem’s willingness to recognize and enforce those fingerprints.

The Starstruck platform is being built on the back of a series of licensing agreements that Udio has struck over the past seven months.

Universal Music Group settled its copyright infringement lawsuit and signed a licensing deal with Udio in October 2025 – the first agreement of its kind between a major music company and a generative AI music platform.

Warner Music Group followed with a similar settlement and licensing agreement in November 2025.

Merlin , the digital licensing partner for independent labels and distributors, signed a licensing deal with Udio in January 2026.

Kobalt – whose webinar surfaced the Starstruck details – signed its own licensing agreement with the platform in April 2026.

And later that month, Believe confirmed to MBW that it had also inked a licensing deal with Udio .

Sony Music Group remains the notable holdout.

Sony ‘s portion of the RIAA -led copyright infringement lawsuit against Udio , filed in mid- 2024 , remains active.

Speaking to MBW last week at a breakfast networking event co-hosted by MBW and The Raine Group , Sanchez declined to comment on the Sony litigation but said: “Partnership with the music industry is not incidental to what we do, but fundamental.”

At the same event, Sanchez defended the walled garden approach.

“A highly controlled ecosystem is necessary for most rightsholders and artists to be comfortable with this extraordinary and potentially transformative technology,” he said.

The Starstruck details arrive in the same week that Spotify and Universal Music Group announced a deal to let fans create AI-powered covers and remixes of UMG songs as a paid add-on for Spotify Premium subscribers.

That agreement, announced on Thursday (May 21), positions Spotify as a direct competitor to Udio in the licensed AI remixing space – but with the advantage of over 290 million paying subscribers worldwide.

Udio was co-founded by former researchers at Google DeepMind and launched publicly in April 2024 with backing from investors including Andreessen Horowitz , will.i.am , and Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger . Music Business Worldwide

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_Originally reported by [Music Business Worldwide](https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/udios-licensed-ai-music-app-will-be-called-starstruck-with-four-creation-modes-for-fans-report/)._