A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Observers said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be used for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
