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An activist organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.

Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training

Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for data to train their models.

An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.

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

The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].

Archive's Declared Goal and Worries

The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.

The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means 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 mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.

AI Training and Copyright Battleground

A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.

“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.

The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its systems.

The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.

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

Government Proposals and Responses

Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.

The secretary of state for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.