An activist organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
