A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Observers said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio taken 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.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of the service”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.