Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment are asking a federal judge to make DistroKid hand over data on how much AI-generated music it distributes.
The two majors want to use the information as evidence in their original 2024 copyright case against AI music generator Suno, which is pending in federal court in Massachusetts.
The labels filed their motion to compel in Manhattan federal court on October 14.
They say DistroKid “refuses to produce a single document” sought in a September subpoena, a legally binding demand for evidence.
DistroKid has answered the subpoena in writing. In an October 9 supplemental response, it described a third-party “prediction model” it uses to test recordings for AI generation and made statements about false positives, according to the labels’ proposed order.
In their court papers, the labels’ lawyers call DistroKid “one of the primary conduits by which the streaming market is being flooded with AI-generated recordings.”
DistroKid is not a defendant in the Suno case, so the labels are asking a court in New York, where DistroKid is based, to enforce the subpoena.
The proposed order would require DistroKid to produce documents showing, month by month since it began using the model, how many recordings it delivered to streaming services, how many it tested, and how many the model scored as likely AI-generated, in whole or in part.
The labels also want the total streams and royalties those flagged recordings generated – and, if the model identifies Suno as the actual or likely source of a recording, how many were attributed to Suno.
Another request seeks the name and vendor of the model, whether it can identify which AI service generated a recording, and any analysis DistroKid has of its accuracy, including the basis for its statements about false positives.
Suno, by contrast, does not track where music made on its platform is released or how it performs on streaming services, the labels say.
In the motion, UMG and Sony describe the data they want as “highly relevant information that only DistroKid possesses,” and say the requests are “proportional to a case in which the market effect of AI-generated music is a central contested question.”
The filing further states that DistroKid delivered nearly 12 million tracks to a single unnamed streaming service between March and September this year – more than half of all tracks that service received, and more than every other distributor put together. UMG cited the same figures in its own lawsuit against DistroKid.
Suno‘s central defense is that training its models on copyrighted recordings is “quintessential fair use” – and one of the questions a court asks when weighing that defense is whether the use harms the market for the original works.
UMG and Sony argue that DistroKid’s numbers would show how much AI music is reaching the market, and that this music competes with recordings made by human artists.
In the labels’ account, DistroKid has objected that how much AI music it ships to streaming services tells a court little about whether Suno broke the law when it built its models.
UMG and Sony counter that their case extends to what happens commercially after the alleged copying, including AI-generated tracks displacing music made by people.
In a statement to Billboard on October 16, DistroKid said it is a third party in the litigation and is “committed to transparency and will continue to cooperate with the legal process.”
The labels’ proposed order would give DistroKid until October 30 to produce the documents.
On October 14, UMG and Sony took similar action against two of Suno’s investors.
In San Francisco federal court, the labels asked for orders compelling Bond Capital and Menlo Ventures to comply with subpoenas, according to court dockets for the Bond and Menlo cases.
In June, Bond led Suno’s Series D funding round, which raised more than USD $400 million at a $5.4 billion post-money valuation.
Menlo Ventures, which led Suno’s USD $250 million Series C in November 2025, also invested in the Series D.
Exhibits filed with the Bond motion include Suno’s Series D announcement, the docket shows.
UMG and Sony first sued Suno in June 2024, alongside Warner Music Group, which settled with Suno in November 2025. The two remaining majors filed a second suit in the same Massachusetts federal court on September 18.
The second complaint accuses Suno of copying 60,202 of the labels’ recordings without a license.
At the statutory maximum of USD $150,000 per work for willful infringement, those recordings would carry a theoretical ceiling of just over $9 billion, as MBW has reported.
The September 18 complaint makes the same market-harm argument as the DistroKid motion: “Every machine-generated track delivered to a streaming service competes with the Copyrighted Recordings for placement, for discovery, for finite listener attention, and for a share of the fixed royalty pools from which genuine artists and rightsholders are paid.” It adds: “Dilution at this scale and velocity is not just a future harm; it is a present, measured, and accelerating one.”
UMG sued DistroKid in Delaware federal court on September 15, alleging copyright infringement and deceptive trade practices.
That UMG complaint alleges that “DistroKid is flooding platforms with AI-generated ‘slop’ that siphons revenue and listeners from the legitimate artists and rightsholders.”
A footnote in UMG‘s filing states that the suit “is not about the distribution of AI-generated music when clearly disclosed as such.”
Sony is not a party to the Delaware case.
MBW has contacted UMG and Sony for comment.Music Business Worldwide
