A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Observers said the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think 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 asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
