An activist organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers noted the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
