An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Observers noted the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
