A digital rights group has stated to have scraped a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Observers said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Worries
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, 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 distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably 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 be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting 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.
