A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Observers noted the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their models.
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 performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data 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 frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed 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 March 2025.
