A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data 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 associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
