Advocacy Group Asserts to Have Extracted Countless of Music Tracks from the Streaming Giant

A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.

Potential Boost for AI Development

Observers said the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their models.

An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.

“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.

The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.

Archive's Stated Mission and Worries

The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released 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.

They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large digital files online.

“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.

Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground

A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be used for training AI models.

“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.

The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.

A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.

Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.

Government Proposals and Reactions

Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.

A government minister for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.