A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released 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 asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used 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 principle “build their own private free version of the service”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
