Activist Group Claims to Have Extracted Millions of Music Tracks from the Streaming Giant
A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
A group called 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 carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released 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 asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of the service”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.