An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Observers said the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired 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 ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital 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”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
