A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Observers said the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for data to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
