An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known 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 Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large digital 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 purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “train 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.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
