Activist Group Claims to Have Extracted Countless of Music Files from Spotify

A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.

Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training

Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their models.

A group known as 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 songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.

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

The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].

Archive's Declared Mission and Worries

Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public 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 its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.

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

Model Development and Copyright Battleground

A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for training AI models.

“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.

The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.

A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.

Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.

Policy Considerations and Reactions

In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.

The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.