An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid AI companies searching for material to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course 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 culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, 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.
