A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Observers noted the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable 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 allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
