An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for data to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course the service 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”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
