An activist organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated 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 means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
