Activist Collective Asserts to Have Extracted Millions of Audio Tracks from the Streaming Giant

An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.

Possible Impetus for AI Development

Observers said the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for material to train their models.

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

“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.

The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].

Group's Declared Goal and Concerns

Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said 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 Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.

“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.

AI Training and Copyright Battleground

Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.

“Educating models on pirated material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.

The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its systems.

The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.

Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.

Government Considerations and Responses

In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.

A government minister for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.