A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
