Advocacy Collective Claims to Have Extracted Millions of Music Tracks from the Streaming Giant
An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Observers said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared 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 pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge 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.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
