An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Stated Mission 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 recognized for offering links to pirated 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 listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
