Advocacy Group Claims to Have Scraped Millions of Music Tracks from the Streaming Giant
A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.