An activist group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method 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 describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary 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.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
