An activist group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital 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 frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, 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.
