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A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.

Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development

Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their models.

A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.

“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.

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

Group's Stated Goal and Concerns

Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.

The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.

“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.

Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground

A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for developing AI models.

“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.

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

The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.

Copyright has become a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.

Policy Considerations and Responses

Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.

The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.