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An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.

Possible Impetus for AI Training

Industry experts said the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their technology.

A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.

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

The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.

Group's Stated Goal and Concerns

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

The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data files online.

“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.

Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate

A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for training AI models.

“Training on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.

The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.

The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.

Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.

Policy Proposals and Reactions

Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.

A government minister for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.