An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Observers noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think 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, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method 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 frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of Spotify”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and development 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 March 2025.
