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A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.

Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development

Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for material to train their technology.

A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.

“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.

The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.

Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns

The streaming service 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 pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.

They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.

“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.

AI Training and Copyright Debate

A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.

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

The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.

The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.

Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.

Policy Considerations and Responses

In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.

A government minister for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.