A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Observers noted the apparent data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, 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.
