Activist Group Asserts to Have Scraped Millions of Audio Tracks from Spotify
A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
