An activist organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Observers said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio 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 start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
