🔗 Share this article Advocacy Group Asserts to Have Extracted Millions of Music Tracks from Spotify A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online. Potential Impetus for AI Training Observers noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for material to train their models. A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its full catalog. “We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson. The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections. Group's Declared Goal and Worries Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music. The group asserted the audio files represented 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 great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”. AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be used for developing AI models. “Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated. The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated 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 “create their own private free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”. Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other. Government Proposals and Reactions Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns. The secretary of state for technology, research and technology 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 policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.