An activist group has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-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”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
