An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public 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.
The group 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 means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting 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.
