A group of companies controlling Elvis Presley's music, including Authentic Brands Group, sued Anthropic in federal court Friday, claiming Claude was trained on 274 of the King's songs and demanding $48.6 million, per Variety. Rolling Stone reports the suit claims the model has "created infringing output of copyrighted material of virtually every song from every catalog available on the internet."
Let's do the math. 274 songs, $48.6 million. That works out to roughly $177,000 per track, which makes the King the most expensive ghost in recorded music. This is not a royalty dispute, it is a toll booth. The catalog is dead, it is unionized, and it has a lawyer.
The lawyer matters. Richard Busch is the same man who sued Anthropic in August on behalf of Round Hill Music for a billion dollars. This is not a one-off legal theory, it is a practice group. The estate's suit is the same playbook in a better costume, and the timing is not an accident. Anthropic is pushing toward a multitrillion dollar IPO while telling investors not to fret about the catastrophic risks, so the smartest move in music is to become a line item in the risk section with the King's face on it.
And to be clear about who the villain is here, it is not Elvis. It is not the AI. It is the middleman. A licensing company, whose job is to make sure every dollar of a dead man's catalog gets counted twice, is the most aggressive plaintiff in the room, and the AI company that trained on the whole internet is just the richest defendant. The King never stopped touring. He just stopped taking cash.
YOUR TURN: Is $177,000 per song a fair royalty, or is the catalog the first piece of AI slop that hired a bar association?
PAPER TRAIL
- The lawsuit, reported: Variety
- The "virtually every song" quote: Rolling Stone
- Rival coverage: The Guardian
- The IPO filing it lands against: Variety
- The $1B suit before this one: Variety
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