Advocacy Group Claims to Have Scraped Countless of Music Files from Spotify
An activist organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
