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A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.

Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training

Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for material to train their technology.

An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.

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

The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.

Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns

The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated 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 listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.

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

Model Development and Copyright Debate

A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.

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

The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.

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

Copyright has become 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 raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.

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