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An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.

Potential Impetus for AI Training

Observers said the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their models.

An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.

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

The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.

Archive's Stated Mission and Worries

Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.

They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large digital files online.

“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.

AI Training and Copyright Battleground

A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.

“Educating models on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.

The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.

The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.

Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.

Policy Considerations and Responses

Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.

A government minister for technology, research and technology told 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 policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.