🔗 Share this article Advocacy Group Claims to Have Extracted Millions of Music Files from the Streaming Giant A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly. Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development Observers said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies searching for material to develop their models. An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire catalog. “We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative. The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections. Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music. The group claimed the music files represented 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 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 knowledge and culture”. AI Training and Copyright Battleground A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems. “Training on pirated data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated. The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models. A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”. Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other. Policy Considerations and Reactions In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns. A government minister for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.