Activist Group Asserts to Have Scraped Millions of Audio Tracks from Spotify
A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies looking for data to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music acquired 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 ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.