Activist Collective Asserts to Have Extracted Millions of Music Tracks from Spotify
A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released 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 sharing large data files online.
“Of course 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 knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
