🔗 Share this article Advocacy Group Asserts to Have Extracted Countless of Music Tracks from Spotify An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online. Potential Impetus for AI Development Observers said the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their technology. A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full catalog. “We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative. The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management]. Archive's Stated Goal and Worries The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music. They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means 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,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”. AI Training and Copyright Debate A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for developing AI models. “Educating models on pirated data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated. The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems. The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”. Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other. Government Considerations and Responses Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns. A government minister for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.