A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for material to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized 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 distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train 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 private free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
