An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Observers noted the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material 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 performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing 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 listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “train 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, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal 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 proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
