A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Observers said the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for data to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music taken 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 audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course 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”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern 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.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
