🔗 Share this article Activist Collective Asserts to Have Scraped Countless of Music Tracks from Spotify A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online. Potential Impetus for AI Development Observers said the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms 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 entries of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory. “We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative. The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM protections. Group's Declared Mission and Worries The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music. The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online. “Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”. Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be used for developing AI models. “Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he stated. The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its systems. The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”. Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other. Government Proposals and Responses In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions. The secretary of state for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.