An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Observers said the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for material to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies 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 Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
