Advocacy Collective Asserts to Have Extracted Millions of Audio Files from Spotify
An activist group has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging 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 purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
