A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Observers said the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital 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 frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
