Activist Collective Asserts to Have Scraped Countless of Music Tracks from Spotify
An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Observers noted the seeming data breach could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
