An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, authors and content creators 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 copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
