UMG and Sony seek court order forcing DistroKid to disclose AI song volumes in Suno case

UMG and Sony's motion to compel

Universal Music Group and Sony Music filed a motion in Manhattan federal court on October 14, 2026 seeking to compel independent distributor DistroKid to produce monthly data on AI-generated song uploads, according to the filing reported on October 16, 2026. The labels said DistroKid had refused to comply with subpoenas issued in September 2026 and argued that the requested figures constitute information uniquely in the distributor's possession and proportional to a dispute where the market impact of AI-generated music is central.

Link to the Suno litigation

The labels have pursued copyright infringement claims against AI music generator Suno since 2024, alleging that the company copied protected sound recordings without authorization to train its technology. UMG and Sony told the court that DistroKid holds information they cannot obtain from Suno, including internal measurements of AI-generated recordings entering major streaming platforms, while Suno itself does not track where its recordings are distributed or how they perform after leaving its service. DistroKid disputed the relevance of the requested data, contending that the volume of AI-generated music distributed to streaming platforms has little bearing on whether Suno unlawfully copied copyrighted recordings.

Volume figures cited by the labels

In the joint filing, UMG and Sony described DistroKid as an outsized conduit for AI-generated music to digital services and cited figures showing that between March and September 2026, the distributor delivered nearly 12 million tracks to a single major digital service, accounting for more than half of all tracks delivered to that service during that period and exceeding deliveries from all other distributors combined. The labels argued that those figures could establish competition between machine-generated recordings and copyrighted works, a factor courts weigh in fair-use analyses under federal copyright law.

DistroKid's separate dispute with UMG

The subpoena fight runs alongside a separate September 2026 lawsuit in which UMG, without Sony, accused DistroKid of enabling bad actors to upload mass-scale AI tracks that dilute royalty pools for genuine artists. DistroKid told Billboard it takes copyright protection, fraud prevention, and ecosystem integrity seriously and expressed disappointment that UMG chose litigation over established industry processes. The distributor also acknowledged removing a limited number of recordings after that suit was filed, though some independent musicians have contested the removals, saying legitimate work was taken down without adequate explanation.

Next step

A DistroKid representative had not immediately responded to a request for comment on the latest subpoenas as of the October 16, 2026 report. The Manhattan federal court has not yet ruled on the labels' motion to compel.