Advocacy Collective Claims to Have Extracted Millions of Music Files from the Streaming Giant
An activist organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
