Round Hill Sues Suno and Anthropic for $1B Over AI Training on Pirated Songs

Independent music publisher Round Hill Music has filed copyright infringement lawsuits against AI companies Suno and Anthropic, alleging they used hundreds of copyrighted songs without permission to train their artificial intelligence systems. The potential damages, according to the plaintiff, could exceed $1 billion.

Round Hill, a prominent music publisher whose catalog includes hits like the Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris," Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart," the Kinks' "Lola," and Dio's "Holy Diver," provided a list of 500 songs that the defendants allegedly infringed upon. The company stated in the suits that it plans to "amend to list potentially ten thousand or more of their musical compositions," which could push the total damages past the billion-dollar mark.

"There is simply nothing fair about a company using theft to build for purely commercial purposes a multi-billion dollar business while those from whom they stole receive nothing," wrote prominent music attorney Richard Busch, who is representing Round Hill. He noted that Suno and Anthropic have previously argued in other copyright cases about the necessity of progress and AI's value to society, but "there is simply no reason — other than rote expediency — to have that progress come at the cost of copyrights holders."

Round Hill further argued that the defendants' "expediency" arguments completely falter when considering the significant cash valuations Suno and Anthropic have achieved while "exploiting illicit copies of copyrighted works, including the Round Hill Works." The publisher emphasized that building multibillion-dollar AI businesses on copyrighted material without compensating rights holders constitutes theft, not fair use.

The lawsuits highlight the growing tension between the AI industry and content creators, as companies like Suno (which develops music-generation AI) and Anthropic (creator of the Claude chatbot) rely on vast datasets often scraped from the internet without explicit permission. Round Hill's move signals that independent publishers are increasingly willing to challenge tech giants in court over the unauthorized use of creative works for AI training.