Activist Group Claims to Have Scraped Countless of Audio Files from the Streaming Giant

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

Potential Boost for AI Development

Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could boost AI companies searching for data to develop their models.

A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.

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

The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.

Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns

The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.

The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened 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 beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.

Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground

Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.

“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.

The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.

The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.

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, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.

The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.