A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
