An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Observers noted the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for data to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared 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 start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training 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 leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members 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 scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
