A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public 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 music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
