A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Observers noted the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
