Advocacy Collective Claims to Have Scraped Millions of Music Files from Spotify

An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.

Possible Impetus for AI Development

Observers noted the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their models.

A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.

“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.

The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].

Group's Stated Mission and Worries

Spotify does not think 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.

The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.

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

AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground

Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.

“Training on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.

The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its systems.

A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.

Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.

Government Proposals and Reactions

Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.

A government minister for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.