An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify 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 copyright-infringing books, wrote 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 means of exchanging 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 mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
