Advocacy Collective Asserts to Have Scraped Countless of Music Files from the Streaming Giant
An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Observers noted the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for data to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally 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 “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
