An activist group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for data to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train 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 the service”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
