An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
