YuE2 released with open source and weights under CC BY-NC 4.0

The YuE tool has a new release, YuE2 · frontier music generation with symbolic planning. Release date — 09.09.2026. The release on GitHub describes three scenarios: creating songs from text, zero-shot covers from a transcribed melody, and iterative editing of a composition together with an agent. The code, the agent skill and the first-party weights are released under CC BY-NC 4.0; third-party components and the YuE-v1 archive retain their original licenses. The developer notes that the fixed generation matches the public version 0.1.5, while the patch updates packaging, licensing and CLI availability.

What it means

In our reference, the YuE tool page records different terms: the code and weights are listed under Apache-2.0, the largest weights file is 4.6 GB, and all files total 11.6 GB. The YuE2 release changes the first-party license to CC BY-NC 4.0, that is, non-commercial. This applies only to the new YuE2 code, skill and weights; the original YuE-v1 remains under its previous terms. As for hardware, the fact sheet has no data: the developer does not state VRAM or download size requirements for YuE2. The release description mentions recent runs of generation, covers and editing on GPU, but there are no specific numbers. Installation requires Python 3.12 and a pip package or cloning the repository. The practical takeaway for a reader of the reference: if you have already worked with YuE under Apache-2.0, moving to YuE2 means a license change to non-commercial for the new components. If you specifically need an open source song generator with commercial use allowed, it is worth checking whether YuE-v1 remains sufficient or looking for alternatives in the AI tools for 3D and video section.