Suno wants a court to force the MLC to hand over streaming data from 8 platforms going back to 2021

Suno wants every month of streaming data the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) has collected since 2021 from 8 services: Spotify, Apple, Amazon, YouTube, Deezer, Pandora, SoundCloud and Tidal. On October 15, 2026, Suno filed a motion in Nashville federal court asking a judge to make the MLC hand it over within 14 days of an order.

The MLC isn’t a party to the lawsuit. Universal Music Group and Sony Music are suing Suno in Boston, and Suno says the MLC’s numbers show “what actually occurred before and after AI-generated music arrived.”

That price is where it gets odd. The MLC’s own lawyers quoted it over the summer, then refused to produce anything.

What streaming data does Suno want from the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC)?

The MLC is the nonprofit the US Copyright Office picked under the Music Modernization Act of 2018 to license streaming services and pay songwriters and publishers their mechanical royalties. It started in January 2021, and every service on its blanket license sends it a usage report each month.

Under a Copyright Office rule, those reports show how often each track was played, plus its title, featured artists, ISRC and label name where the service has them.

The subpoena Suno wants enforced is dated August 31. Digital Music News quotes it asking, “For Amazon, Apple, Deezer, Pandora, SoundCloud, Spotify, Tidal and YouTube, respectively,” for “Performance Data for all Labels in Your Database on a monthly basis for the period 2021 to present.” The subpoena itself (Exhibit G) isn’t public on CourtListener, so the list of 8 comes from that quote.

It replaced an April subpoena that named 11 services, Meta, Snapchat and TikTok among them, and asked for data “disaggregated on a Label-by-Label basis.” Suno rewrote it after the MLC said it had “no documents” responsive to that one.

Why does Suno want the MLC’s streaming data in the Universal and Sony case?

Universal, Capitol Records and Sony’s First Amended Complaint makes a market argument, as Suno’s motion describes it. Songs made with Suno “supposedly flooded” services like Spotify and Apple Music, pulled listeners away from the labels’ catalogs and cut their market share and royalties.

The labels aren’t claiming those songs infringe, at least for now. Their infringement claim is about the copies Suno made to train its model.

Suno’s motion calls the MLC’s data “a comprehensive record of what happened in the music streaming market during the key period when Suno’s platform was launched into the market.” Market harm is one of the 4 fair use factors a US court weighs, so those numbers matter for Suno’s main defense.

That’s also why Suno wants every label, not just the 2 suing it. Asked whether Suno and Udio would take data for the plaintiff labels only, their lawyer Chris Campbell of The Campbell Firm wrote that “a limitation of that kind would defeat a central purpose of the request.” Honestly, that tracks: a market share only means something next to everyone else’s streams.

Meanwhile the labels want DistroKid to count how many AI tracks it delivers. They’re after the supply side of the flooding story, and Suno is after the listening side.

How the MLC went from a $5,000 quote to refusing Suno’s subpoena

After “multiple calls and emails in June and July 2026,” Suno’s motion says, the MLC’s outside counsel confirmed it holds the data and quoted about $5,000 plus hosting. The MLC even emailed some streaming services that a production was coming.

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We have spent nearly four months working with the MLC to focus this production on relevant material and to eliminate any burden, including by agreeing to pay the MLC's costs.

Then, on July 27, the MLC’s counsel wrote that “the MLC has never agreed to any production.” On August 14 and August 24 it said the MLC had “no documents in response to the subpoenas that were served,” reading the April subpoena as too narrow to cover the database both sides had been discussing.

The MLC’s objections to the new subpoena, as Digital Music News reports them, call it “vague, ambiguous, and overbroad” and say the MLC “received objections to disclosure from affected” streaming services. It also says it “does not collect data directly from record labels or sound recording distributors.” That lines up with the Copyright Office rule, which only asks services for the label names they actually have.

What happens next in Suno’s subpoena fight with the MLC

The MLC told Suno it will oppose the motion, and no response is on the docket yet. Suno’s supporting memorandum quotes material the labels marked highly confidential, so Suno asked to file it under seal.

Udio filed first. Its parent company, Uncharted Labs, filed its own motion against the MLC in the same court on October 1, case 3:26-mc-00020. On October 21 the court ordered a hearing there, with no public date yet.

Udio’s filings aren’t public, so I can’t say which of the labels’ Udio cases that subpoena belongs to. On October 22, Judge Eli Richardson reassigned Suno’s case to Chief Judge William L. Campbell Jr. because it’s related to Udio’s, so one judge now has both.

The labels are fighting Suno investor Lightspeed and DistroKid over their own subpoenas, and this time Suno is the one asking for someone else’s files. I log every step on the Suno lawsuit tracker.

If the court sides with Suno, the labels’ claim that AI songs took their listeners gets checked against 8 services’ monthly play counts going back to 2021.