An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled 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 third party scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio 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.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
