A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Observers said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for data to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 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 leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
