A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Observers noted the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for material to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated 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 Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging 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 frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology told 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.
