An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Observers said the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
