A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Observers said the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify 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 represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music 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 music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
