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An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.

Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training

Observers said the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for data to develop their technology.

An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.

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

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

Group's Stated Goal and Worries

The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.

They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital files online.

“Of course Spotify 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 culture”.

Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground

A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.

“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.

The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.

The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.

Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.

Policy Considerations and Responses

Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.

The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.