A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of the service”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology told 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.
