Advocacy Group Claims to Have Extracted Millions of Audio Files from the Streaming Giant
An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course 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 knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
