A digital rights group has stated to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies looking for data to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
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 known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital 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 mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
