A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released 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.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote 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 tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
