An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
