An activist organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Observers noted the seeming data breach could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital 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 “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state 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 government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
