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An activist group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.

Possible Impetus for AI Development

Industry experts said the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their models.

An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.

“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.

The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.

Archive's Declared 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, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.

They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data files online.

“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.

Model Development and Copyright Battleground

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

“Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.

The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.

A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.

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

Government Proposals and Responses

Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.

The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.