An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Observers said the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 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.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
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 correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
