An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for data to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means 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,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
