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A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.

Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training

Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their technology.

A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.

“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.

The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.

Group's Stated 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 providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.

The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.

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

Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground

Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.

“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.

The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.

A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.

Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.

Policy Proposals and Reactions

In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.

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 administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.