A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for data to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music acquired 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear 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 next year.
