An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
