An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their models.
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 hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally 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”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister 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 right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
