An activist group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Observers said the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for data to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved 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 unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
