A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing 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 streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging 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 purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
