A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent 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 pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast 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 “create their own private free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-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.
A government minister for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
