A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ 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 method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged 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”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train 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.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal 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 supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
