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An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly.

Potential Impetus for AI Training

Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for data to train their technology.

An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.

“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.

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

Group's Declared Mission and Concerns

Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.

They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared 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 beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.

AI Training and Copyright Battleground

Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.

“Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.

The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.

The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of the service”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.

Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.

Policy Proposals and Responses

In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.

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