An activist organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
