A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Observers said the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching for material to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
