An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, 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.
