An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching for material to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
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, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data 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 “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
