Advocacy Group Claims to Have Scraped Millions of Music Tracks from the Streaming Giant

A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.

Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development

Observers said the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.

A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.

“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.

The Stockholm-based service, 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 questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].

Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns

The streaming service does not believe the audio taken 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 ‘historical repository’ for music.

The group 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 sharing large digital files online.

“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.

AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground

A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for training AI models.

“Training on pirated data is unfortunately 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 a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.

The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.

Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.

Government Considerations and Reactions

In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.

The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.