An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer 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 nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
