A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public 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.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
