A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed 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,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
