An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify 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 constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally 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 “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
