Advocacy Collective Asserts to Have Scraped Countless of Audio Tracks from the Streaming Giant
An activist group has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Observers said the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
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 tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated 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 distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
