An activist group has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers noted the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks 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 catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, 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 regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
