An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio 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 Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of the service”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
