An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Observers said the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated 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 posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
