An activist organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Observers said the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
