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A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.

Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development

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

An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.

“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.

The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].

Group's Stated Goal and Worries

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

The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing 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 describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.

Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground

A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be used for developing AI models.

“Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.

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

The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.

Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.

Government Considerations and Reactions

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

The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, 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.