An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing 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 describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of the service”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.