An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
