An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for data to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
