An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development 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 policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
