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An activist group has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.

Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development

Observers said the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their models.

An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.

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

The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.

Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns

The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.

They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.

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

Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate

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

“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.

The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop 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 version of the service”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.

Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.

Policy Considerations and Reactions

In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.

The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.