An activist group has stated to have scraped a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site 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 AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of the service”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
