An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record 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 were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted 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 data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
