A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed 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 fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
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”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
