An activist group has stated to have scraped millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Observers said the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows 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 entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting 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.
