Advocacy Group Claims to Have Extracted Countless of Music Tracks from the Streaming Giant
A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
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 used questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive'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, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data 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 frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
