An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the seeming leak could aid AI companies searching for material to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means 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,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
