The short version: Universal Music Group sued the biggest do-it-yourself distributor in music, and the distributor is now pulling songs in response. Some of those songs, their artists say, are human-made and properly cleared.
What happened this week?
Artists have been taking to social media to say DistroKid removed their music without notice. On Saturday (Oct. 10), DistroKid confirmed to The Verge that the takedowns are a direct response to claims made by UMG. The company called it a “very small number” of recordings.
Read moreTaylor Swift’s TTPD Deep Cut Is Trending Again, Thanks to a Bald Ann Dowd Account
The examples are specific. Musician McGwire says six of his songs vanished, including a cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely” that he says he had a license for, and one pulled over an uncleared sample he says was released two years after his track. Rapper King Chase says a whole album by an artist he works with came down after three or four years online. Both describe no explanation, and McGwire says he had to talk to a bot before he reached a person.
DistroKid gave up on customer service about two years ago.
Jesse Cannon, music producer and marketing pro, The Verge
Why is UMG suing?
UMG, with its Capitol Records and Capitol Christian Music Group units, filed the case in federal court in Delaware on Sept. 15, Music Week reported. The claims are deceptive trade practices and copyright infringement, and the headline accusation is that DistroKid runs an “AI slop pipeline.”
According to Music Business Worldwide’s breakdown of the 52-page filing, there are two theories. Four counts cover copyright infringement: UMG names 1,000 of its recordings that it says were copied in whole or in part by tracks DistroKid delivered, and it seeks the maximum statutory damages. One count says DistroKid passed off AI-made tracks as music by real human artists.
The complaint’s examples are the kind that make a case legible. UMG says a slowed-down version of Ellie Goulding’s “Love Me Like You Do” went out under the identical title, and that Lady Gaga’s “Judas” appeared as “Judas Sped Up.” A DistroKid-distributed version of Sam Smith and Kim Petras’s “Unholy,” credited to an act called LDS, shows 29,646 plays against 1.97 billion for the authorized recording.
How big is the AI part?
The filing says DistroKid delivered nearly 12 million tracks to a single, unnamed streaming service in six months, more than half of everything that service received, and more than all other distributors combined. It says the account with the highest volume, an act called Lofi Chill, released 4,562 tracks in a year. UMG says technical analysis traced more than 98 percent of one such catalog to Suno. A footnote makes clear UMG isn’t suing over AI music that is clearly labelled as such. For more on how that kind of catalog gets made, see our explainer on AI vocals and bot streams.
What does DistroKid say?
It disputes the case. After the lawsuit, the company said it “intend[s] to defend DistroKid vigorously,” and that UMG chose litigation over established industry processes. On the takedowns, Amanda Ferri, its VP of Artist Services, told The Verge that DistroKid “regret[s] the disruption to affected artists” and is working to limit it.
Why does this matter beyond UMG?
Scale. Hypebot reports that, by most estimates, DistroKid serves about 4 million artists and accounts for 30 to 40 percent of all new music uploaded to Spotify and other services. When a pipe that wide tightens, independent artists feel it first.
The suit also follows UMG’s earlier settlement with Believe and TuneCore, per Hypebot. And DistroKid, a founding member of the industry’s Music Fights Fraud Alliance, was absent from the distributors that signed the IFPI’s Streaming Integrity Initiative, which launched the day before the lawsuit landed, according to MBW. Stricter checks on uploads look like where this is heading. Who pays for them, and how fast a mistaken takedown gets fixed, is the open question.
What’s next?
These are allegations, and no court has found DistroKid liable. We found no reported court date. For now, anyone whose release was pulled has to contact DistroKid directly, and as McGwire’s account suggests, getting a human on the line isn’t guaranteed.
