A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed 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 frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
