🔗 Share this article Advocacy Group Claims to Have Scraped Millions of Audio Tracks from Spotify An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online. Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their technology. An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory. “We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative. The Swedish company, 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 questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management]. Group's Declared Mission and Concerns Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released 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 distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online. “Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”. AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems. “Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated. The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models. The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”. Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other. Government Proposals and Reactions Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns. The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.