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An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.

Possible Boost for AI Training

Observers said the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their models.

An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.

“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.

The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].

Group's Stated Goal and Concerns

Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized 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 represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital 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 mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.

AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground

Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.

“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.

The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.

The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.

Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.

Policy Proposals and Reactions

In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence 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 matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.