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An activist organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.

Potential Impetus for AI Training

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

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 performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full inventory.

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

The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.

Group's Stated Goal and Worries

Spotify does not think the music taken 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 ‘historical repository’ for music.

They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.

“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.

AI Training and Copyright Debate

A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for training AI models.

“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.

The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.

A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.

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

Policy Considerations and Responses

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

The secretary of state for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.