UMG sues DistroKid over AI‑generated music and copyright infringement

UMG Recordings, Capitol Records, and Capitol CMG sued music distributor DistroKid in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware on September 15, 2026, accusing it of flooding digital music services with AI-generated “slop” passed off as artist-backed releases and of knowingly distributing tracks that infringe the labels’ copyrights.

The 52-page complaint names DistroKid, LLC, Kid Distro Holdings, LLC, and DK Holdco, LLC as defendants and brings five counts: violations of Delaware’s Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act, direct copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement, and direct and vicarious infringement of pre-1972 sound recordings (those fixed before February 15, 1972) under federal copyright law. UMG seeks maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per infringed work, injunctive relief, attorneys’ fees, and the impoundment and destruction of infringing copies. The docket in UMG Recordings, Inc. v. DistroKid, LLC shows the complaint was filed with a jury demand and that summonses were issued to all three defendants the same day.

The Deceptive-Trade-Practices Allegations

The complaint stresses that the case does not challenge AI-generated music when it is clearly disclosed as such. It is, the filing says, “about DistroKid masquerading as something it is not and benefiting from that false impression.”

According to the complaint, DistroKid’s highest-volume account holder, operating under the name Lofi Chill, released 4,562 unique tracks in a single 12-month period, a pace the filing describes as the equivalent of 20 to 30 full-length albums per month. Two other accounts, Chill Flow Radio and Mellow Vibes Radio, released 1,901 and 1,615 tracks in the same period, and technical analysis cited in the complaint found that over 97 percent of Chill Flow Radio’s tracks and over 98 percent of Mellow Vibes Radio’s tracks were raw outputs of the AI song generator Suno.

The filing alleges DistroKid accounts for more than 50 percent of all weekly track releases on one major digital service and distributed nearly twelve million tracks to that service in the six months preceding the suit.

DistroKid belongs to the Music Fights Fraud Alliance, a nonprofit association of rightsholders and distributors that maintains a database of tracks delisted for streaming fraud. The complaint alleges that when another distributor banned the account Lounge Ibiza Cafè for streaming fraud and offboarded it in April 2026, it flagged 196 of the account’s tracks in that database, yet DistroKid distributed the account’s tracks bearing the same flagged identifying codes in June 2026.

The complaint also alleges a practice it calls ISRC theft, in which an uploaded track carries the same International Standard Recording Code, the unique identifier assigned to each version of a recording, as a legitimate track. In one cited example, a DistroKid-distributed song titled “Juice Newton” by an artist named Candy DuIfer bears the same code as Juice Newton’s “Angel of the Morning”; the complaint notes the uploader’s name swaps a capital I for the lowercase l in legitimate artist Candy Dulfer’s name. The filing says revenue generated by the legitimate track on that service remained frozen at the time of filing because DistroKid declined to disclaim ownership.

The Copyright Infringement Counts

Exhibits to the complaint list 1,000 UMG works, spanning registered copyrighted recordings and pre-1972 recordings, that the filing says DistroKid illegally copied and distributed. The complaint describes those examples as only the visible portion of the infringement: it says UMG’s investigation has identified nearly 2,000 infringing DistroKid-distributed recordings and that discovery will likely reveal thousands more, since millions of tracks are never submitted to rights-management tools.

The cited examples include a slowed-down version of Ellie Goulding’s “Love Me Like You Do” distributed under the identical title, four separate tracks infringing Toosii’s “Favorite Song,” and tracks titled “Unholy – Radio Edit” and “Judas Sped Up.” Others, such as an “Impossible – Shontelle (SIIDZ Remix),” copy the official cover art of the original release, while long mixes allegedly incorporate “MMMBop,” “One Of Us,” “Always On Time,” and “Ms. New Booty.”

Central to the knowledge allegation are the rights-management systems operated by YouTube, Meta, and TikTok, which use audio fingerprinting to flag when a DistroKid-distributed track matches a recording in which UMG has asserted rights. According to the complaint, DistroKid personnel review those conflicts and, time and again, concede the company has no rights in the flagged recording, either expressly or by letting the notice expire, yet continue distributing the same recording under the same identifying code to other digital services that lack such tools.

UMG lists five DistroKid-distributed tracks — “Buy Me Presents” by Jessica Da Silva, “Hypnotized” by Bri Hazyy, “IT GIRL Freestyle” by Lolo Renny, “Mystery” by David Diaveli, and “Slow Money” by Illori Vice — that it says were removed from TikTok or YouTube over rights conflicts but remained on Spotify or Apple Music at the time of filing. UMG says it identified the infringements using the digital services’ rights-management tools, including YouTube’s ContentID system, and verified them manually and through the content-identification tool Pex.

The Parties and DistroKid’s Growth

The plaintiffs, UMG Recordings and Capitol Records, both Delaware entities, and Capitol CMG, a California corporation, are based in Santa Monica and describe catalogs that include recordings by Ariana Grande, Elton John, Kendrick Lamar, Lady Gaga, Nirvana, and Rihanna. A corporate disclosure filed the same day identifies Universal Music Group, Inc., Universal Music Group Holdings, Inc., and Universal Music Group, N.V. as corporate parents and Bollore SE as an affiliate. The three defendants are Delaware limited liability companies with their principal place of business in New York.

DistroKid, founded in 2013, says it distributes 30 to 40 percent of all new music for more than 4 million artists, with a catalog of more than 60 million songs. DistroKid’s help center states that the company accepts music made with AI tools but requires uploaders to own 100 percent of the rights in what they upload and bars impersonation, mass-generated spam, and infringement. The complaint quotes the company’s “Artist first, always” marketing and argues such public commitments are misrepresentations under Delaware’s deceptive-trade-practices law.

The complaint ties DistroKid’s growth to outside investment, citing a 2021 Insight Partners investment that valued the company at $1.3 billion and a reported $2 billion valuation around the majority investment announced by CVC Capital Partners on July 6, 2026. CVC said Insight Partners would retain a significant minority stake, that terms were not disclosed, and that the transaction was expected to close in the third quarter of 2026, with Phil Bauer continuing to lead DistroKid as president.