Advocacy Group Asserts to Have Extracted Millions of Music Tracks from Spotify
An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Observers said the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the music 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 asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use 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 science, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting 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.
