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

Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training

Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid AI companies searching for material to develop their models.

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

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

The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.

Archive's Stated Mission and Worries

Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.

They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.

“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.

AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate

Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for training AI models.

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

The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.

The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.

Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.

Government Proposals and Responses

In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.

The secretary of state for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.