A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers noted the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for data to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted 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 the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal 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 technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
