A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their models.
A group 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. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music 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 the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
