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An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.

Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training

Observers said the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.

An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full inventory.

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

The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.

Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns

Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote 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 streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.

“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.

Model Development and Copyright Battleground

Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.

“Educating models on pirated data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.

The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.

The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.

Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.

Policy Considerations and Reactions

Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.

The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.