An activist organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Observers noted the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think 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 ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, 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 describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
