🔗 Share this article Advocacy Group Claims to Have Extracted Countless of Music Tracks from Spotify A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online. Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for material to train their technology. A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its entire inventory. “We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson. The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used 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 released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music. The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large digital files online. “Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”. AI Training and Copyright Debate Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems. “Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said. The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to develop its systems. A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”. Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other. Government Considerations and Reactions In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions. A government minister for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.