A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Observers said the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for material to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners 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 great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of the service”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
