A court has cleared Universal Music Group (UMG) and Sony Music to depose a former Menlo Ventures executive over a deleted social media post about his use of the AI platform Suno. Separately, Apple has asked a court to quash a Suno subpoena in the UMG case. Both moves concern documents and testimony, and an independent label can prepare for that kind of dispute without a litigation budget.
A deleted post is still a line of inquiry
The deposition order shows how use of an AI platform gets established in practice. The court did not rule on the music. It allowed the major labels to question a witness about a post that no longer sits on his feed. Deleting a public statement does not close off the question of what the person said or did. It moves the question into a deposition room.
For a rightsholder, the mechanism is simple. Evidence of how an AI platform was used often sits in places the rightsholder does not control: social posts, investor communications, third-party records. The party that can name where that evidence lives, and can show when it first noticed it, is better placed to ask a court for access.
Subpoenas cut both ways
Apple’s motion to quash argues that Suno’s requests are overbroad, burdensome and seek confidential business information. Those three objections are the standard grounds for resisting a records request, and they set the rule for anyone who sends one. A request that names specific documents, a specific period and a specific purpose is harder to resist than a request for everything.
An independent label will rarely be in a position to issue subpoenas. The same logic still applies to any takedown notice, platform complaint or licensing demand. A claim that identifies the exact recordings, the exact usage and the exact dates gets handled. A claim that says a catalogue was probably used does not.
Ownership has to be provable work by work
Suits against AI developers and brands, along with a levy in Liberia that pays out as welfare, all turn on whether a rightsholder can prove ownership work by work. That sets the first item in the evidence file. Before any question of what an AI service did with a recording, the claimant must show that it owns that recording and that composition.
The practical consequence is that a label’s strongest asset in any dispute is a clean, per-track ownership record. A bulk statement that a label owns its catalogue carries less weight than a list showing, for each track, who owns the master, who owns the composition, and where each right was registered.
Impersonation tooling is becoming a product category
Detection is also moving from internal practice to purchasable service. Leo Fakhrul of XYNQ and Reuel Williams of Cadenza each built a trust and safety startup after experiencing impersonation fraud, and both plan to extend their tools beyond music. For labels and distributors, this means impersonation monitoring is a vendor decision, not only an in-house task.
Wider markets for these tools usually bring more vendors and more ways to compare them. A label evaluating one should ask what the tool records when it finds a case, because the output that matters in a dispute is a dated record of what was found, where, and when.
Settlements are documents too
Neil Young has filed a second lawsuit against Donald Trump, seeking $10 million and an injunction over alleged unauthorized use of a song and claiming that a December 2020 settlement was violated. The second suit rests on the first resolution. A settlement only helps the next dispute if its date, scope and terms can be produced and read. Licences, settlements and consent agreements all work the same way: the paper decides what can be enforced later.
The evidence file to keep
A label or small distributor can assemble this without outside counsel. The aim is to be able to answer, within a day, who owns what, what was agreed, and what was found.
- Per-track ownership sheet: master owner, composition owner, registration references and the date each registration was made.
- Agreement index: every licence, consent, settlement and distribution agreement, with dates, territories and any permitted or prohibited uses.
- Incident log: each suspected impersonation or AI-generated copy, with the date found, the platform, the link, and a saved copy of the page, since posts can be deleted.
- Action record: every takedown request or complaint filed, when it was filed, and the response.
- Tool output: if a detection vendor is used, the exported reports with timestamps, not only a dashboard view.
The saved copy matters most. The Suno case turns partly on a post that was deleted, and any evidence kept only on someone else’s platform can disappear in the same way.
Decisions to make this quarter
Start with the ownership sheet, because every other claim depends on it. Next, set a standing rule that any suspected misuse is captured and logged on the day it is found. Then check each existing agreement for what it permits, so that a later dispute starts from the contract language and not from memory. Finally, if the label is considering an impersonation-detection service, make the export of dated, per-incident records a condition of purchase.
