An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
