An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
