An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
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.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed 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 fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
