An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for data to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
