An activist group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
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. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding 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.
