An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
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 pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, 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,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
