A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service 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 ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
