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An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.

Possible Impetus for AI Training

Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train 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 artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.

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

The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.

Group's Declared Mission and Concerns

Spotify does not believe the audio taken 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 audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.

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

AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate

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

“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.

The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.

A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.

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

Government Proposals and Reactions

Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.

The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.