A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said 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 tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing 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 streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
