An activist organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references 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 artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
