An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for material 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 metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
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 recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, authors 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 suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
