DistroKid Pulls Legit Indie Songs in UMG Copyright Response — SkimNews
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- Josh Sahunta, a Nashville singer-songwriter, discovered his 2022 album "Mellowdrama" — one of his most-streamed projects — had been grayed out on Spotify and removed from Apple Music and YouTube after DistroKid flagged it for copyright infringement without identifying the allegedly infringed recordings or the rightsholder filing the claim.
- The DistroKid copyright strike froze Sahunta's streaming royalty payments — a major income source — and "potentially" hindered his ability to release future music, per the source.
- DistroKid VP of Artist Services Amanda Ferri acknowledged "a very small number of recordings" were removed in response to UMG claims, but declined to specify how many legitimate artists were affected or detail the detection tools used.
- UMG filed a September lawsuit accusing DistroKid of "deceptive business practices" and flooding streaming platforms with AI-generated "slop," pointing to high-volume accounts like "Lofi Chill" and "Chill Flow Radio" whose tracks it claimed were "raw outputs from the AI song generator, Suno"; the suit also disclosed DistroKid's recent majority-stake sale to CVC Capital Partners for $2 billion.
- Artist manager Joel Gouveia told Rolling Stone DistroKid likely used an AI-based detection tool for the mass takedowns, but those tools are "still relatively new and imperfect" — and roughly a week later much of "Mellowdrama" remained grayed out on Spotify and entirely unavailable on Apple Music and YouTube.
- Sahunta told Rolling Stone that independent artists "are unfortunately the most powerless group in the music industry," noting he was contacted by multiple other distributors offering deals after he shared his story publicly.
Why it matters: Independent artists like Sahunta — whom UMG's own filing implicitly concedes comprise the bulk of streaming music — have no infrastructure to dispute mass takedowns triggered by imperfect AI-detection tools responding to major-label lawsuits. With royalty payments frozen and no clear appeals path, they absorb the financial cost of a copyright fight they aren't even a party to, exposing a structural power imbalance at the heart of music distribution.
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