Activist Collective Claims to Have Extracted Millions of Music Files from the Streaming Giant

An activist organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.

Potential Boost for AI Training

Observers said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their technology.

A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.

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

The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.

Archive's Stated Goal and Worries

The streaming service does not think the music taken 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 ‘historical repository’ for music.

They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.

“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.

Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate

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

“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.

The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.

A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.

Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.

Government Proposals and Responses

In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.

The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.