An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data 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 mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
