An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
