An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Observers noted the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released 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 asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
