An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for material to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
