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A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.

Potential Boost for AI Development

Observers said the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their technology.

A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.

“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.

The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].

Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns

Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.

The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users 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,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.

Model Development and Copyright Battleground

A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.

“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.

The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.

The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.

Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.

Policy Proposals and Reactions

In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.

A government minister for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.