An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies looking for data to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries 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 identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
