An activist organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for data to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, 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 AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
