Activist Collective Asserts to Have Extracted Millions of Audio Files from the Streaming Giant
A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching for data to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, 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 fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent 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 “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.