Advocacy Collective Asserts to Have Extracted Millions of Music Tracks from the Streaming Giant

An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.

Possible Boost for AI Training

Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for data to train their models.

A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.

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

The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].

Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns

The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.

They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.

“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.

AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate

Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.

“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.

The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models.

A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.

Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.

Policy Proposals and Reactions

In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.

The secretary of state for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.