🔗 Share this article Advocacy Collective Claims to Have Scraped Countless of Music Tracks from Spotify A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly. Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development Observers said the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for data to develop their models. An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory. “We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative. The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections. Archive's Declared Goal and Worries The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music. They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing 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 “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”. Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training AI models. “Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, 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 huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its systems. The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”. Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other. Government Considerations and Responses In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions. The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.