An activist organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ 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 data 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”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting 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.
