An activist group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for material to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed 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,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
