A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish 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 used questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook 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 private free version of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
Maya Chen is a freelance writer and urban enthusiast with a passion for documenting city life and cultural shifts.
