An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear 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 next year.
