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A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.

Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training

Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid AI companies searching for data to train their models.

A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.

“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.

The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].

Archive's Declared Mission and Worries

The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released 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 asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.

“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.

Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground

Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.

“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.

The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.

The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.

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

Government Considerations and Responses

In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.

A government minister for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.