A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed 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 “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
