A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music 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 ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
