An activist organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for data to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote 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 Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service 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 heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
