A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers noted the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing 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 Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
