UMG and Sony press DistroKid for AI music data as streaming royalties climb

If the labels win the order, AI-flagged track shares and their royalties become sworn evidence in the Suno copyright case. That case turns on market harm.

A subpoena, a deadline and 30-40% of new music

The test is whether AI output hurts the market for licensed music. The court has not ruled on the labels' proposed order. Neither side has said what a resolution would involve. Judge Arun Subramanian approved the joint filing in Manhattan on 28 October; lawyers for both sides signed it a day earlier. The labels served the subpoena on DistroKid in September. In their motion, the labels said DistroKid "refuses to produce a single document". They also called the distributor "one of the primary conduits by which the streaming market is being flooded with AI-generated recordings".

DistroKid says it distributes 30-40% of "all new music in the world". That figure sits at the centre of the dispute.

The labels want monthly counts of tracks delivered to streaming services and how many were tested. They also want to know how many scored as likely AI-generated, and the total streams and royalties those recordings earned. Digital Music News reported that DistroKid's response deadline moved from 4 November to 6 November. The data is evidence for the labels' 2024 copyright lawsuit against Suno in Massachusetts federal court. Suno says training its models on the recordings was fair use. The test is whether that use harmed the market for the original works.

Why the labels want the numbers

The first case covers 560 recordings. Up to $150,000 per work infringed gives a theoretical maximum of around $84 million.

UMG and Sony sued Suno a second time in September over 60,202 further recordings. At the same per-work ceiling, that would carry a theoretical maximum of just over $9 billion. Warner Music Group, originally a co-plaintiff, settled with Suno in November 2025. Apple asked a federal court in California on 13 October to block Suno's deposition demand. Suno filed its opposition on 27 October. Suno's filing says the labels allege that the Suno output is "flooding streaming services like Apple Music" and diluting the royalty pools those services pay out.

The money at the top is still rising

Universal Music Group reported third-quarter 2026 revenue of EUR 3.394 billion on 29 October. That was up 12.3% year on year.

Paid subscription revenue in its recorded music segment rose 19.2%, sponsored streaming edged up 4.7%, and physical sales rose 17.4% at constant exchange rates. The IFPI's Global Music Report 2026, published on 18 March 2026, put 2025 industry revenue at $31.7 billion, up 6.4% and an 11th consecutive year of growth. Streaming contributed more than $22 billion, or 69.6% of the total. Paid services took 52.4% of the market, with 837 million subscribers worldwide. At SiriusXM, revenue share and royalty costs rose $5 million year on year to $726 million.

Where the royalty money lands

By Music Business Worldwide's calculation, that equals 33.7% of total revenue. A year earlier the figure was 33.4%.

Pandora, owned by SiriusXM, ended September with 38.81 million monthly active users, down 6.6% from 41.56 million a year earlier. Self-pay subscribers fell 177,000 to 5.51 million, and ad-supported listener hours dropped 10% to 2.25 billion. Tanzania's Copyright Society, COSOTA, says 70% of collected licence fees goes to rights holders and 30% to administrative costs. Bandcamp takes a 15% share of digital revenue. That drops to 10% after $5,000 in cumulative sales. One $10 album sale there earns roughly what 2,000 to 3,000 Spotify streams pay out, according to Ones To Watch.