A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said 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 means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up 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 develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research 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 government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
