An activist group has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission 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 offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
