A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for data to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, 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 start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
