An activist organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching for material to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing 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 listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
