An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for material to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission 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 ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law 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
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
