An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music 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 ‘historical repository’ 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 method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
