Music publishers sue Anthropic for $3 billion over training on pirated works
Music publishers including Universal Music Group and Concord Music Group filed a lawsuit against Anthropic alleging the company illegally downloaded over 20,000 copyrighted songs and sheet music to train its Claude AI model, seeking damages exceeding $3 billion.
What happened
On January 28, 2026, Universal Music Group, Concord Music Group, ABKCO, and other music publishers filed a lawsuit against Anthropic alleging the company illegally acquired sheet music, song lyrics, and musical compositions for over 20,000 copyrighted songs to train Claude.
The lawsuit names Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann as defendants. The publishers say they discovered the extent of the piracy through the discovery process in a separate case filed by book authors against Anthropic, and filed this new lawsuit after a court denied their motion to amend the original case.
Reported impact
The publishers seek damages exceeding $3 billion, potentially making this one of the largest non-class action copyright cases filed in U.S. history.
The lawsuit cites iconic songs including The Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses," Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline," Elton John's "Bennie and the Jets," Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Have You Ever Seen The Rain," Maroon Five's "She Will Be Loved," and Katy Perry's "California Gurls."
Index analysis
In the related Bartz v. Anthropic case, a federal judge ruled that AI training itself is covered by fair use, but the judge stated it was not legal for Anthropic to acquire content via piracy. That case resulted in a $1.5 billion settlement.
Anthropic denies the allegations, arguing the training constitutes fair use of copyrighted materials.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.