An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern 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 Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
