A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly 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 principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
