A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching for data to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed 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 fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately 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 alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
