An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for data to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of the service”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
