An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching for data to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
