An activist organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for material to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries 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 were involved in illegal scraping,” stated 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 third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital 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 describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
