A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Observers noted the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching for material to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics 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 released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop 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 private free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
