Activist Group Asserts to Have Extracted Millions of Music Files from Spotify
An activist group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers noted the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital 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 describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network 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 “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors 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 proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
