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

Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training

Observers said the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for data to develop their technology.

An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.

“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.

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

Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns

Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.

They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.

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

AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground

A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.

“Educating models on pirated material is sadly 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 archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.

A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.

Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.

Government Proposals and Reactions

In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.

A government minister for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.