An activist group has stated to have scraped a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid AI companies searching for data to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located 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 inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed 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 pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
