Anyone watching the AI music space closely could feel a shift coming when both Udio and Suno were sued earlier this year. Then on November 14th, Udio settled, and it was clear the industry was about to change. Recently, Warner Music Group and Suno announced their licensing deal, with limits on downloads and new guardrails for artists now on the horizon for 2026.

The landscape is changing, not the purpose of Web3 Metal

Web3 Metal began in October 2023 as a news and art aggregator, following the early signals of where the genre might go next. Blockchain was the first experiment. We tried MP3 music drops and built small collectible moments. The earliest collectors remain the first supporters of W3M, even as blockchain searches for its true role in the future tech stack for indie musicians.

From the start, the belief behind W3M was the same as it is today: heavy music will eventually embrace digital tools the same way it once embraced synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, and everything else traditionalists tried to gatekeep. Even if it means dragging old heads into the future kicking and screaming, r3sist4nc3 is fvtil3.

For the W3M community, everything shifted when we tapped into the AI music scene. Suno has a busy Discord server, but it doesn’t serve as a good place to connect or build. So I opened the doors and invited people into the W3M Discord.

That became the second wave. We held breakdown competitions and thrash competitions. The prizes were rough early AI videos, but they sparked momentum and gave the community a shared heartbeat. That heartbeat became Cyber Metal Radio, now its own force in the space, with the 2026 awards celebration approaching.

(We’ll explore that full story, the past, present, and future of Cyber Metal Radio, in an upcoming issue.)

As CMR grew, a pattern emerged. Community doesn’t just form around the music itself. It forms around the tools people use and share. That idea pushed W3M further into its next phase, from a watcher to a builder.

So I created the W3M GitHub, a home for current and future tools, experiments, and projects. The way we gathered around AI music platforms and built our own tools, like Cyber Metal Radio, is the same way we can now gather around the tools we build for ourselves. It is a place for the next era of collaboration, creation, and growth.

W3M started as a source of information. It has become a community, a builder of tools, and a meeting point for people shaping the future of heavy music through technology. Even as the industry shifts around us, W3M will be empowering creators and bringing together anyone who wants to experiment, connect, and help define what comes next.

This is where alternative music and AI meet, and the loudest ideas are still ahead.

Explore the project on GitHub and join the Discord to help shape the next wave of AI driven heavy music.