A digital rights group has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies searching for material to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing 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 “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train 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 equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
