A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Observers noted the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
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 known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
