An activist organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for data to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote 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 streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed 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 repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
