An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Observers said the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be used for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting 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.
