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A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.

Possible Boost for AI Training

Observers noted the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.

A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.

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

The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.

Group's Stated Mission and Concerns

Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering 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 its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.

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

Model Development and Copyright Battleground

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

“Training on pirated material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.

The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.

The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of the service”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.

Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.

Government Proposals and Responses

Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.

The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.