An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers noted the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said 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 sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally 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 culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. 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 creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
