A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared 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 providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally 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 “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely 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 allegedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
