An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
The streaming service 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 ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
