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 noted the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching 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 associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the music files accounted for 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 Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be used for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of the service”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
