A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known 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 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 data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
