An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users 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 great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
