Activist Collective Asserts to Have Scraped Countless of Music Tracks from Spotify
A digital rights group has stated to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public 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.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
