Activist Collective Asserts to Have Extracted Millions of Music Tracks from Spotify
An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 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 represent its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based 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 used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
