An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Observers said the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious 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 investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data 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”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
