A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive'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 providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote 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 Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing 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 “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear 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 March 2025.
