Activist Collective Asserts to Have Extracted Countless of Audio Files from Spotify
A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Observers said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies looking for data to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used 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 reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, 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.
