A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Observers said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies looking for data to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding 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.
