Advocacy Collective Claims to Have Extracted Countless of Audio Files from the Streaming Giant
A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service 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 ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging 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 “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
