An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and used 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 recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote 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 its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
