An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers noted the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
