A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Observers noted the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata 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 deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing 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 listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
