🔗 Share this article Advocacy Group Asserts to Have Extracted Countless of Audio Files from Spotify An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online. Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their models. A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog. “We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson. The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management]. Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public 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. The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online. “Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”. AI Training and Copyright Debate Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems. “Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated. The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models. The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”. Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other. Policy Proposals and Responses In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns. The secretary of state for technology, 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 correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.