An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for data to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed 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 frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology 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 committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
