An activist group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers noted the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
