A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers noted the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for data to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious 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 investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened 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,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
