An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Observers noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for material to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote 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 listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, 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.
