An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, said 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 Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, 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 frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of the service”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law 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 allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
