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An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.

Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training

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

An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full catalog.

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

The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.

Archive's Stated Goal 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 offering links to pirated 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 streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.

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

Model Development and Copyright Battleground

A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.

“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.

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

A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.

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

Government Considerations and Reactions

Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.

A government minister for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.