An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Observers noted the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for material to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released 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.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of the service”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
