An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for data to train their technology.
A group called 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 record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
