Advocacy Collective Asserts to Have Scraped Countless of Audio Files from Spotify

An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.

Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development

Observers noted the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their models.

A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.

“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.

The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.

Group's Declared Mission and Concerns

The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.

The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.

“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.

AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground

Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be used for training AI models.

“Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.

The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.

The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.

Copyright has become a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.

Policy Proposals and Responses

In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.

A government minister for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.