Universal and Sony want DistroKid's AI data for Suno copyright fight

Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment have asked a federal judge to order DistroKid to hand over data on how much AI-generated music it handles.

The request was filed on 14 October in federal court in Manhattan, according to Music Business Worldwide. The labels want to use the material as evidence in a separate copyright case they first brought against AI music generator Suno in 2024. That case is pending in federal court in Massachusetts.

DistroKid is not a defendant in the Suno case. A motion to compel, the type of request the labels filed, asks the court to require an outside party to provide information relevant to a dispute.

The proposed order is detailed. It would require DistroKid to produce month-by-month counts of recordings it delivered to streaming services, that were tested for AI generation, and that were scored as likely to be AI-generated in whole or in part.

The labels also want totals for streams and royalties attached to those flagged recordings. Where the detection model names Suno as the actual or likely source, they want counts of how many tracks point back to that platform.

The Suno dispute is now running on more than one track. The original 2024 complaint alleges wilful infringement of works controlled by Universal, Sony and Warner, under Section 106 of the US Copyright Act, the law that sets out the exclusive rights of a copyright owner.

Discovery, the pre-trial exchange of evidence, has already shaped that case. The labels have said it indicated Suno had trained on millions of tracks from their catalogues. In May they sought to add more than 61,000 recordings to the claim. Suno later asked the court to keep the size of its training data sealed, citing competitive harm.

Then came a second lawsuit. In September, Universal and Sony sued Suno again over its V6 model, describing it in court papers as the fruit of the same poisoned tree. Suno said its V6 models were trained in part on music created by its own users on the platform.

A parallel fight involves DistroKid directly. On 15 September, Universal sued the distributor, a company that uploads independent artists' music to services such as Spotify and Apple Music, accusing it of distributing AI-generated "slop" music, Reuters reported. The complaint accused DistroKid of inflating its streaming numbers and revenue with mass-uploaded, bot-generated "spam" music. DistroKid has confirmed it removed tracks.

What makes this stand out is the link the labels are drawing between the two disputes. They argue data sitting inside a distributor could help answer a question at the centre of the Suno case: how much AI-generated output reached listeners, and where it came from.