An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Observers noted the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching for material to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of the service”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
