An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Observers said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files 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 leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course 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 knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
