An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers noted the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing 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 mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
