🔗 Share this article Advocacy Group Claims to Have Scraped Countless of Music Tracks from Spotify A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly. Possible Impetus for AI Development Observers noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their technology. A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 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, stated that the breach did not constitute its full catalog. “We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson. The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections. Group's Stated Goal and Worries Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music. The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared 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 mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”. AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems. “Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed 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 allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models. The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”. Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other. Government Considerations and Responses Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions. A government minister for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.