A digital rights group has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
