A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
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, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
