A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means 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 describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain 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 train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
