A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
