An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Observers said the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for material to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public 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 audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
