An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be used for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
