An activist organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for data to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering 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 streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
