An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Observers noted the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching for material to develop their models.
A group called 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 carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of the service”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
