An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching for data to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
