🔗 Share this article

A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.

Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development

Industry experts noted the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their models.

A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.

“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.

The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.

Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns

The streaming service does not think the music acquired 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.

They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.

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

Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate

A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.

“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.

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

The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.

Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.

Policy Considerations and Reactions

Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.

The secretary of state for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.