Advocacy Group Claims to Have Extracted Countless of Music Tracks from the Streaming Giant
An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Observers said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.