A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
