An activist group has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner 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 technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
