Universal Music Group & its Capitol Records imprint have just sued music distribution platform DistroKid, in a 52-page lawsuit filed at the US District Court in Delaware.
According to their claim, DistroKid actively engaged in leveraging “AI-generated ‘slop’ that siphons revenue and listeners from the legitimate artists and rightsholders.” Apparently, the practices DistroKid is indulging in violate the rules of the Music Fights Fraud Alliance, which the distributor is a part of.
As an example, the lawsuit cited the example ofa “Lofi Chill“ artist that put out a torrential amount of songs: 4,562 tracks in a 12-month period. Aside from this, UMG has also claimed that DistoKid also allows artists to infringe on UMG work by letting artists create remix versions of the songs under the label’s purview.
This is all done without appropriate licenses. So far DistroKid hasn’t issued a response publicly on the matter.
UPDATE: Distrokid has released a statement to address the situation.
“DistroKid is proud to amplify millions of independent artists from around the world and help them bring their music to audiences everywhere. We take copyright protection, fraud prevention and the integrity of the music ecosystem seriously, and work closely with digital streaming platforms, rightsholders and other industry partners on these efforts. Our distribution process includes sophisticated protections that we continuously invest in to stay at the forefront of these efforts. These are shared industry challenges, particularly as technology and the ways music is created and distributed continue to evolve.
We strongly disagree with UMG’s allegations and are disappointed that it chose litigation rather than established industry processes to address these issues. We are confident in our practices and intend to defend DistroKid vigorously.”
