A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Observers said the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for data to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, 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 huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
