An activist group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear 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.
