A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Observers said the seeming leak could aid AI companies searching for material to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music 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.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital 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 describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on pirated material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of Spotify”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
