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A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.

Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training

Observers noted the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their technology.

A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.

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

The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.

Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns

The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.

The group claimed the audio files accounted for 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 Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.

Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate

Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be used for developing AI models.

“Educating models on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.

The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.

A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive 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 creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.

Policy Considerations and Responses

In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.

The secretary of state for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.