A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of the service”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
