An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Observers noted the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
