Sonilo Partners with Shutterstock to Build the Gold Standard in Licensed AI Music

Shutterstock's first-ever partnership with a video-to-music platform licenses its music catalog for AI model training—a new benchmark for responsible AI music

MENLO PARK, Calif, , May 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Sonilo, the world's first professionally licensed video-to-music AI platform, today announced a strategic partnership with Shutterstock (NYSE: SSTK), one of the world's largest providers of licensed creative content. 

Through this partnership, Sonilo has licensed Shutterstock's high-quality music catalog for AI model training—making this Shutterstock's first-ever partnership with a video-to-music AI platform. Sonilo is headquartered in San Francisco and backed by B Capital, a venture capital firm affiliated with the Boston Consulting Group focused on emerging technology startups expanding globally. 

Redefining licensed AI music for video

The AI music industry is at a crossroads. By 2025, infringement cases filed against AI companies had surged by more than 130% year over year. The dominant response from AI music platforms has been to train on unlicensed content first and deal with the legal consequences later—producing AI-generated music that not only raises serious copyright concerns, but floods the internet with low-quality content that shortchanges creators and audiences alike.

Sonilo is built to address these problems. Powered by its proprietary Sonilo v1.0 model, Sonilo takes the video itself as input rather than relying on text prompts. It reads the footage, understands its pacing, structure and emotional arc, and composes an original soundtrack to match. No prompts, no library searches, and no manual syncing. Every soundtrack generated is original, production-ready, and cleared for commercial use—no additional licensing required, whether for social content, branded video, or broadcast use.

Most AI music platforms have treated licensing as an afterthought, training on copyrighted content without authorization and leaving artists without compensation. Sonilo was built differently. By securing professional licensing partnerships upfront, Sonilo ensures that every model it trains is built on content that artists have consented to and been compensated for. This partnership with Shutterstock is a direct expression of that commitment: the music industry doesn't have to choose between innovation and integrity.

"Music has always been the last unsolved layer of video creation, and video has always carried its own soundtrack," said Shawn Song, CEO, Sonilo. "We built Sonilo to hear it and compose from it, without a single text prompt. But how we build matters as much as what we build. While others have chosen to take artists' work without permission and charge creators for the privilege, we've chosen a different path—one where artists are compensated from day one. Partnering with Shutterstock reflects that standard. Every model we train meets a bar the music industry can stand behind, because the most innovative AI platforms don't have to come at the expense of the artists who make all of these possible."

"AI innovation depends on access to high-quality, rights-cleared content and trusted licensing partnerships," said Jessica April, Vice President, Data Licensing & AI Services, Shutterstock. "Sonilo's approach reflects the growing demand for responsibly sourced training data and commercially safe AI workflows. We're pleased to support companies building generative AI products with licensed content and scalable data solutions that help accelerate innovation while respecting creators and rights holders."

Scaling across platforms, built for every creator

This partnership is part of Sonilo's broader momentum. Earlier this month, the platform launched as a native node inside ComfyUI, the open-source AI workflow tool used by over four million creators. Sonilo is also available via API for integration into video tools, creator platforms, game engines, and AI systems, and offers Free, Pro, and Premium tiers. Further platform integrations are planned throughout the rest of this year. 

About Sonilo

Sonilo is the world's first professionally licensed video-to-music AI platform, built for the creators defining the next era of content. Powered by its proprietary Sonilo v1.0 model, it composes original music directly from your footage—matching the pacing, emotion, and story of every frame — in seconds, without a single text prompt. Trusted by professional creators and integrated with leading platforms including ComfyUI and Shutterstock, Sonilo is built on one belief: every original video deserves an equally original soundtrack. Sonilo is headquartered in San Francisco and backed by B Capital.

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About Shutterstock Data Licensing & AI Services

Shutterstock is an end-to-end AI model training partner that unifies data licensing, services, and long-term collaboration under a single provider—reducing operational complexity and helping teams bring higher-performing AI systems to market faster and with greater confidence. Shutterstock combines access to one of the world's largest rights-cleared multimodal datasets with advanced data curation and custom training datasets to power high-performing, deployment-ready generative models. This licensable training data includes high-quality labeled and continuously updated multimodal content with clear data provenance to support AI compliance. Shutterstock leverages ML-assisted evaluation tools to provide model training, fine-tuning, alignment, evaluation, and retraining. Through human-in-the-loop workflows, expert creative feedback, and structured preference data, Shutterstock delivers aesthetic preference signals, benchmarking, and regression testing to drive continuous model improvement. 

Learn more and start the conversation at shutterstock.com/data-licensing.

About Shutterstock, Inc.

Shutterstock is in the business of turning ideas into impact. Powered by a global network of millions of creators and our cutting-edge technology, we provide businesses, creatives, and brand leaders with the essential, universal ingredients to make their work more effective. Shutterstock offers access to one of the world's largest and most diverse collections of high-quality licensable assets, specialized training datasets, evaluation tools, and end-to-end strategic partnerships for the full model training lifecycle, as well as advertising and distribution solutions, exclusive editorial content, and full-service studio production—delivering unparalleled resources to fuel great work.

Discover our impact at www.shutterstock.com and connect with us on LinkedIn, Instagram, X, Facebook and YouTube. 

SOURCE Sonilo