A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
