A digital rights group has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for data to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved 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 found a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote 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 means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
