An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, said 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 its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to develop 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 private free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
