A digital rights group has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal 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 claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
