An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers noted the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing 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 listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital 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 purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, writers 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 suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
