A digital rights group has stated to have scraped a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Observers noted the apparent data breach could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated 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 Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of the service”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
