An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote 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 ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent 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 “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
