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A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.

Potential Impetus for AI Development

Observers noted the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their models.

An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.

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

The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].

Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns

The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.

The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.

“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.

AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate

A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.

“Educating models on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.

The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.

The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of the service”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.

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

Government Proposals and Responses

Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.

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