An activist organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for material to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of the service”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, authors 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 use protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research 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 government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
