An activist organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify 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 knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers 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 rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
