A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
