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A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.

Possible Boost for AI Development

Observers said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their technology.

A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.

“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.

The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].

Archive's Declared Mission and Worries

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 copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.

The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data files online.

“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.

Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground

A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.

“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.

The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.

A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.

Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.

Policy Proposals and Reactions

In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.

A government minister for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.