🔗 Share this article Advocacy Group Claims to Have Scraped Countless of Music Files from the Streaming Giant An activist group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly. Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching for material to develop their models. A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory. “We have located 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, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections. Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music. They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online. “Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”. AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for developing AI models. “Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said. The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its systems. 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”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”. Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other. Policy Considerations and Responses Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions. A government minister for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.