Activist Group Asserts to Have Extracted Countless of Music Tracks from the Streaming Giant
A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering 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 its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed 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 repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear 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.
