An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging 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 purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
