A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid AI companies searching for data to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally 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 information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
