An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for data to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free version 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 artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
