🔗 Share this article Activist Collective Claims to Have Scraped Countless of Music Files from the Streaming Giant An activist group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly. Potential Boost for AI Development Observers said the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for material to train their models. An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full catalog. “We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative. The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections. Group'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 offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music. The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data 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 knowledge and culture”. AI Training and Copyright Battleground A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems. “Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he stated. The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its systems. The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”. Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other. Government Considerations and Reactions Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions. A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.