An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Observers said the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching for material to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of the service”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
