An activist group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for data to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method 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,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, 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 huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
