A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could boost AI companies 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 performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired 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.
They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
