An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows 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 full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public 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.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, 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 archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
