A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Observers noted the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging 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 frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
