An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, 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 representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared 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 beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
