Activist Group Asserts to Have Extracted Millions of Audio Files from the Streaming Giant

A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.

Possible Boost for AI Training

Observers said the seeming leak could aid AI companies searching for material to train their technology.

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 performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.

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

The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.

Archive's Stated 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 recognized for providing links to pirated 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 listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, 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 fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.

Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate

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

“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.

The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.

A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of Spotify”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.

Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.

Policy Proposals and Reactions

In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.

The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.