An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the audio files represented 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 the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
