An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
