🔗 Share this article Advocacy Group Claims to Have Extracted Countless of Music Files from the Streaming Giant An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online. Potential Impetus for AI Training Observers noted the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their technology. A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory. “We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson. The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections. Group's Stated Goal and Concerns Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public 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. They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large digital files online. “Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”. AI Training and Copyright Battleground Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for training AI models. “Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said. The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models. A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”. Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other. Policy Considerations and Responses In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns. A government minister for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.