🔗 Share this article

An activist organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.

Potential Impetus for AI Training

Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their models.

A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.

“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.

The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.

Group's Declared Goal and Worries

Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.

They 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 sharing large data files online.

“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.

Model Development and Copyright Debate

A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be used for training AI models.

“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.

The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.

A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.

Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.

Government Proposals and Reactions

Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.

The secretary of state for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.