🔗 Share this article Advocacy Group Asserts to Have Extracted Countless of Audio Files from Spotify An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly. Potential Impetus for AI Training Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their technology. A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full catalog. “We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson. The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM protections. Group's Declared Goal and Concerns The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music. They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online. “Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”. Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems. “Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated. The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems. The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of the service”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”. Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, writers and creatives 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 use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions. The secretary of state for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.