UMG and Sony seek DistroKid data on AI music uploads

Universal Music Group and Sony Music have asked a court to compel DistroKid to provide monthly data on recordings submitted to streaming services and details of its AI-detection systems, seeking evidence for their copyright litigation against the AI music company Suno. The labels say DistroKid has refused to produce any responsive documents. They argue that the distributor’s detection results would provide direct evidence of the volume of AI-generated music entering streaming platforms and of its market effects, including what the music earns. DistroKid is not a party to the Suno case. It said it was committed to transparency and would continue cooperating with the legal process. The company is an independent distribution platform through which artists place releases on streaming services. The request rests on the labels’ contention that DistroKid is “one of the primary conduits” through which AI-generated recordings reach streaming services. Between March and September, DistroKid delivered nearly 12 million tracks to one major digital service, more than half of all tracks sent to that service and more than all other distributors combined, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The labels contend that Suno does not track where its outputs go after they leave its own platform, whereas DistroKid has acknowledged tracking AI use in songs it sends to services. They say that makes DistroKid unusually important to determining whether AI-made recordings are crowding out human-created work, an issue central to Suno’s fair-use defence. The underlying Suno complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in June 2024, alleges that the service copied and ingested decades of sound recordings to train its model. It says Suno’s prompt-based system can generate music files within seconds, that Suno had more than 10 million users generating files, and that some outputs had reached major services and accumulated as many as 2 million streams. The new records dispute is separate from UMG’s September lawsuit against DistroKid, which this publication covered at the time. In that case, UMG accused the distributor of flooding platforms with AI-generated and infringing recordings, allegations DistroKid strongly disputes. UMG’s complaint cited a DistroKid-distributed artist, Lofi Chill, which it said released 4,562 tracks in a 12-month period, a pace UMG equated to 20 to 30 full-length albums a month. The label also alleged that some distributed AI music was SEO-optimized and deceptively presented as human-created. DistroKid has since said that it removed a very small number of recordings in response to UMG claims, while regretting disruption to affected artists and saying it was working to preserve artists’ ability to release music. It has also said it takes copyright protection, fraud prevention and the integrity of the music ecosystem seriously.