An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology told 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 March 2025.
