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 AI Training
Observers noted the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public 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.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
