A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers noted the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital 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 purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
