An activist group has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Observers said the seeming leak could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development 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 pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
