An activist organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files represented 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 the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
