A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
