A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners 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 great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of the service”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
