An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
