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An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.

Potential Impetus for AI Development

Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to train their models.

A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.

“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.

The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].

Group's Stated Goal and Concerns

Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.

They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.

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

Model Development and Copyright Debate

Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.

“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.

The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.

A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.

Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.

Government Proposals and Reactions

Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.

The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.