A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked 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 accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
