An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers noted the apparent data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks 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 breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
