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A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.

Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training

Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their technology.

An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files 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 leak did not constitute its entire catalog.

“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.

The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.

Group's Declared Goal and Worries

Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.

The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data 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 frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.

AI Training and Copyright Battleground

A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for developing AI models.

“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely 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 copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.

The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.

Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.

Policy Proposals and Responses

In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.

The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.