An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching for material to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said 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 Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of the service”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.