An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers 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 Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting 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 tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
