An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken 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.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means 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 describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
