A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said 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 streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data 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 frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
