An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
