{"id":74855,"date":"2026-10-12T21:28:33","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T21:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/12\/distrokid-says-it-removed-music-in-response-to-umg-lawsuit\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T21:28:33","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T21:28:33","slug":"distrokid-says-it-removed-music-in-response-to-umg-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/12\/distrokid-says-it-removed-music-in-response-to-umg-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"DistroKid Says It Removed Music In Response to UMG Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n\tLast week, Josh Sahunta<\/a>, a singer-songwriter based in Nashville, received a strange text from a friend and collaborator: Why had he removed his album Mellowdram<\/em>a from Spotify? The 2022 LP was one of Sahunta\u2019s most-streamed projects and contributed significantly to his streaming royalty income. He had no reason to take the album down himself, and no idea what his friend was talking about.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSearching for answers, Sahunta saw that much of the album was not only grayed out on Spotify, but also his account with DistroKid<\/a>, the largest music distribution platform by volume. Soon, Mellowdrama<\/em> would disappear from Apple Music, YouTube, and other streaming platforms, too. But Sahunta couldn\u2019t find any reason for the takedowns until he contacted DistroKid customer support directly.<\/p>\n

\n\tThey told him Mellowdrama<\/em> \u2014 which Sahunta wrote and recorded himself \u2014 had been flagged for copyright infringement. They did not say what recordings he\u2019d allegedly infringed upon, nor name a rightsholder filing the claim. But DistroKid nevertheless hit Sahunta with a copyright strike, freezing his royalty payments and potentially hindering his ability to put out future releases.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSahunta sent a flurry of emails trying to fix the mistake. After receiving no replies, he decided to share his story on Instagram<\/a> last Tuesday and his comments and DMs were flooded with messages from other artists dealing with the exact same problem.<\/p>\n

\n\tIndependent artists, Sahunta tells Rolling Stone<\/em>, \u201care unfortunately the most powerless group in the music industry. And the irony is we comprise the majority of music on streaming, yet we\u2019re so easily taken advantage of and screwed over by these companies that claim they are for independent artists\u2026 They\u2019re preying on the people that are paying for their services and keeping their businesses afloat.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDistroKid has since acknowledged the issue in a statement shared with Rolling Stone.<\/em>\u00a0\u201cA very small number of recordings distributed through DistroKid have been removed in response to claims made by [Universal Music Group<\/a>],\u201d Distrokid\u2019s Vice President of Artist Services, Amanda Ferri, said. (It\u2019s unclear how many legitimate artists have been affected by the takedowns.)<\/p>\n

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\n\tUMG filed a lawsuit against DistroKid in September, accusing the distributor of deceptive business practices and \u201cblatant\u201d copyright infringement. Despite promoting itself as a \u201dleading music distributor for artist-backed releases,\u201d the lawsuit claims DistroKid has been \u201cflooding platforms with AI-generated \u2018slop\u2019 that siphons revenue and listeners from legitimate artists and right holders.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tUniversal Music Group did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe strongly dispute the allegations underlying UMG\u2019s lawsuit and regret the disruption to affected artists,\u201d Ferri continued. \u201cWe are working to minimize that disruption while protecting artists\u2019 ability to release their music.\u201d (This statement was first shared with The Verge<\/a><\/em>, which reported on the takedowns last week.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAmong the offenses alleged in the suit, UMG said DistroKid allows users to upload unauthorized remixes or sped-up versions of copyright-protected songs to streaming services, as well as straight-up instrumental copies that have new vocals laced over them. UMG further claimed that DistroKid lets uploaders attach protected album art to infringing tracks, potentially confusing listeners and tricking them into playing the wrong song.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAt one point, UMG\u2019s lawsuit highlighted several of DistroKid\u2019s high-volume account holders, which boast names like \u201cLofi Chill,\u201d \u201cChill Flow Radio,\u201d and \u201cMellow Vibes Radio,\u201d and regularly distribute hundreds of tracks a month. Noting these \u201cproduction rates are implausible for any human artist,\u201d UMG claimed a \u201ctechnical analysis\u201d of these catalogs confirmed that \u201cthe vast majority of their tracks\u2026 are raw outputs from the AI song generator, Suno.\u201d (UMG is involved in a separate copyright infringement suit with Suno, accusing it of training its model on protected recordings.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cDistroKid\u2019s willingness to be a home for such sham artists has inured to its benefit. Its distribution rate has exploded in the AI era,\u201d the lawsuit claims, noting at one point that DistroKid recently sold a majority stake to a private equity firm, CVC Capital Partners, for $2 billion.<\/p>\n

\n\tLike many companies or organizations that find themselves facing massive copyright infringement claims, DistroKid appears to have taken steps to remove some of the allegedly infringing content it may have helped place on streaming platforms (while still, as noted in the statement above, denying UMG\u2019s underlying claims). How so much original music, like Sahunta\u2019s, got caught up in this scraping operation remains unclear.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tJoel Gouveia, an artist manager who wrote about the takedowns on his Substack<\/a> last week, believes DistroKid likely used some kind of algorithm or AI-based program to root out potentially infringing songs.\u00a0But as Gouveia notes to Rolling Stone<\/em>, these AI detection tools are themselves still relatively new and imperfect.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cInstead of taking the precautionary [measure], taking their time, using humans to figure out if this music is in fact made by humans, they mitigated the risk,\u201d he tells Rolling Stone<\/em>. \u201cThey just did mass takedowns. I think, at the end of the day, they will fix it and hopefully these artists won\u2019t be completely SOL [shit outta luck], but it\u2019s really sad to see.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t(DistroKid declined to comment further on the tools it used to issue the takedowns, or the efforts its taking to rectify erroneous notices.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tAs of Monday, Oct. 12, much of Sahunta\u2019s Mellowdrama <\/em>is still grayed out on Spotify and is completely unavailable on Apple Music and YouTube. The silver lining, such as it is, is that by sharing his story on Instagram, other distributors have offered him deals. But he remains wary that this could just as easily happen elsewhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think the real lesson for me here was just that, as an independent artist who doesn\u2019t have the infrastructure of a label to help prevent these things and advocate for me: when something like this happens, I\u2019m powerless,\u201d Sahunta says. \u201cI can\u2019t really do anything to defend myself.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n