A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for material to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of the service”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
