Activist Collective Asserts to Have Scraped Countless of Music Tracks from Spotify
A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
