An activist organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Observers said the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for material to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research 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 administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
