An activist organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for material to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 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 great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
