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A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly.

Possible Boost for AI Training

Observers noted the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their technology.

An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full inventory.

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

The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.

Archive's Declared Mission and Worries

Spotify does not think the audio acquired 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 music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means 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 mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.

Model Development and Copyright Battleground

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

“Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.

The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.

The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.

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

Policy Considerations and Reactions

Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.

A government minister for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.