🔗 Share this article Advocacy Collective Claims to Have Scraped Millions of Music Tracks from the Streaming Giant An activist organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly. Possible Impetus for AI Development Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data 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 entries of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its full inventory. “We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson. The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management]. Archive's Declared Mission and Worries Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music. They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online. “Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”. Model Development and Copyright Debate Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be used for training AI models. “Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated. The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models. The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”. Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other. Government Considerations and Reactions In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions. A government minister for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.