A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies looking for data to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
