An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Observers noted the seeming data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album 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 nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened 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,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
