An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for material to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
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 pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding 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.
