Advocacy Collective Claims to Have Extracted Millions of Music Files from the Streaming Giant

An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.

Potential Boost for AI Training

Observers said the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for material to train their models.

A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 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 leak did not constitute its entire catalog.

“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.

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

Archive's Declared Goal and Worries

Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.

The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.

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

Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground

Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.

“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.

The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.

The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.

Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.

Government Considerations and Responses

Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.

A government minister for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.