A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally 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”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
