🔗 Share this article Advocacy Group Asserts to Have Scraped Millions of Audio Tracks from Spotify A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them online. Potential Boost for AI Development Observers noted the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for data to train their technology. An entity 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. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full inventory. “We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative. The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections. Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music. They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online. “Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”. Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for training AI models. “Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated. The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models. A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of the service”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”. Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other. Policy Considerations and Reactions In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns. The secretary of state for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.