A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Observers noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music 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 ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of Spotify”. 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 key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to let 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 supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
