An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service 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 pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users 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 fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training 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 develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow 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 backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
