An activist organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for data to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, 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 “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
