A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow 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’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
