A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course 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 “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of Spotify”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
