An activist organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared 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,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
