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A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.

Possible Boost for AI Training

Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.

An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its full catalog.

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

The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].

Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns

Spotify does not think the music 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.

They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.

“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.

AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground

Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for training AI models.

“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common 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 huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.

The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of the service”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.

Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.

Policy Proposals and Responses

In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.

A government minister for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.