An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
