Advocacy Collective Asserts to Have Extracted Millions of Music Files from Spotify
An activist organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, 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 beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
