An activist organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Observers said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for data to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
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, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
