Universal Music Group‘s complaint against DistroKid, filed last week, runs to 52 pages.
It accuses the DIY distributor of “deceptive trade practices and blatant copyright infringement”, and of flooding streaming services with AI-generated “slop.”
The suit runs on two separate theories: (i) four counts of copyright infringement, which reach tracks that copy UMG recordings, and (ii) one count under the Delaware Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act, essentially accusing DistroKid of distributing “AI slop” under the guise of music made and recorded by actual humans.
But the lawsuit isn’t all finger-pointing: it also contains some startling statistics, about DistroKid and the business it runs.
Here are five of them, and what each is doing in the filing.
1) 12 million tracks, one service, six months
The biggest number in the complaint is also the one UMG handles most carefully.
The suit states that DistroKid delivered nearly 12 million tracks to a single major streaming service over the past six months.
That is more than 50% of every track that the service received in the period, according to the filing. It’s also more than every other distributor combined, according to UMG.
The streaming service is not named. Neither are DistroKid‘s rivals: a chart in the complaint plotting weekly releases by distributor from 2016 to 2026 has every competitor’s name redacted.
2) 4,562 tracks from one ‘artist’
DistroKid‘s highest-volume account holder is an act called Lofi Chill.
Over a 12-month period, according to UMG, it released 4,562 unique tracks, an average of 380 a month, or the equivalent of 20 to 30 albums.
The complaint’s description of that rate: “a pace no human musician could achieve.”
Two further accounts, Chill Flow Radio and Mellow Vibes Radio, released 1,901 and 1,615 tracks respectively over the same window.
According to UMG, accounts like these share a set of tells: generic or functional names, AI-generated cover artwork, algorithmically-optimized track names, and “no social media presence” or other sign that a human musician sits behind the recordings.
3) 98% of one catalog traced to Suno
UMG says technical analysis found that over 98% of Mellow Vibes Radio’s tracks, and over 97% of Chill Flow Radio’s, were raw outputs from Suno.
Other data points the same way. Of 1,551 AI music tracks submitted to SIQA‘s charts in Q1 this year, 90.4% were made using Suno, and 75.8% were distributed by DistroKid.
Worth noting here what UMG is not arguing. A footnote states that the suit “is not about the distribution of AI-generated music when clearly disclosed as such.”
Copyright has no purchase on these tracks, because they do not copy UMG recordings. UMG’s complaint is deceptive trade practices (a law in Delaware called DTPA) – in essence, that DistroKid led the market to believe this “AI slop” was human music.
The DTPA is a business-to-business statute, so UMG must establish that it competes with DistroKid as a distributor to have standing at all.
This is why the complaint spends pages mapping DistroKid‘s mastering, video, and merchandise add-ons onto the functions a record company performs.
4) $150,000 per work, across 1,000 works
Filed in the US District Court for the District of Delaware, the suit seeks the maximum statutory damages available under US copyright law, at $150,000 per work infringed.
UMG‘s exhibits (which you read in full here) name 1,000 recordings repped by UMG, which produces a theoretical ceiling of $150 million.
Every one of the 1,000, the suit says, has been copied in whole or in part by at least one track that DistroKid delivered to streaming services.
UMG says it found those matches through rights-management tools including YouTube‘s Content ID, then verified them by comparing the audio files manually, or through content-identification service Pex.
Exhibit A runs to 955 registered recordings, listed alphabetically by artist.
It includes nine Billie Eilish tracks, among them bad guy and What Was I Made For?; seven from Lady Gaga, including Poker Face, Bad Romance, and Judas; and a run of Kendrick Lamar recordings taking in Humble., DNA., and euphoria.
The Weeknd‘s Blinding Lights appears three times over, in its original, remix, and Major Lazer versions.
Also listed: Guns N’ Roses‘ Sweet Child O’ Mine, Elton John‘s Crocodile Rock, Sir Mix-A-Lot‘s Baby Got Back, Hanson‘s MMMBop, and Olivia Rodrigo‘s deja vu.
Three of those entries reappear later in the complaint, as examples of what UMG says DistroKid actually distributed.
Ellie Goulding‘s Love Me Like You Do went out, the suit alleges, as a slowed-down version carrying the identical title, with nothing to mark it as an edit.
Shontelle‘s Impossible appeared as Impossible – Shontelle (SIIDZ Remix), under cover art the complaint describes as near-identical to the original.
And Lady Gaga‘s Judas turns up, UMG says, as Judas Sped Up.
A fourth example is reproduced as a screenshot. Sam Smith and Kim Petras‘ Unholy appears in a DistroKid-distributed version credited to an act called LDS, titled Unholy – Radio Edit and using the original’s artwork.
The figures in that screenshot show the authorized recording at 1.97 billion plays, and the DistroKid version at 29,646.
Exhibit B covers the other 45, all of them recordings fixed before 1972, which are protected under a separate provision of US copyright law.
That list leans heavily on Motown and the sixties: The Supremes‘ Where Did Our Love Go, The Temptations‘ My Girl, and The Miracles‘ You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me, alongside The Velvet Underground‘s Sunday Morning and a Beatles outtake of Strawberry Fields Forever.
The 1,000 is a floor rather than a ceiling. The complaint calls those recordings “the tip of the iceberg,” and says discovery will likely show thousands more.
A separate figure sits alongside it. The suit says UMG‘s investigation has identified nearly 2,000 infringing DistroKid-distributed recordings.
How UMG intends to prove willful infringement is set out at length, and it sidesteps the obvious volume defense.
When a rights conflict surfaces in YouTube‘s Content ID system, the filing says, a DistroKid employee logs in and chooses between asserting ownership and conceding it.
UMG alleges that DistroKid repeatedly concedes, then continues distributing the identical recording, under the identical ISRC, to every other service that has not flagged it.
One such screen is reproduced in the filing. It logs a conflict over Ellie Goulding‘s Love Me Like You Do, an 89% reference overlap, and a resolution in UMG‘s favor dated January 27, 2026.
Damages are not the only remedy sought. UMG also wants DistroKid ordered to pull infringing tracks from every service and to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.
5) 196 flagged tracks
The smallest number in the filing carries its sharpest allegation against DistroKid.
An account holder called Lounge Ibiza Cafè was offboarded by a rival open-access distributor in April this year.
That distributor flagged 196 of its tracks for streaming fraud in the shared database run by the Music Fights Fraud Alliance.
In June, UMG says, DistroKid distributed Lounge Ibiza Cafè tracks bearing those same flagged ISRCs.
DistroKid was a founding member of the MFFA and remains a member today, which is what gives it access to that database.
DistroKid was also absent from the signatories to IFPI’s Streaming Integrity Initiative, launched the day before the lawsuit landed.Music Business Worldwide
