A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said 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 its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
