Advocacy Group Asserts to Have Scraped Countless of Music Files from Spotify
An activist organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Observers noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify 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 culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
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 material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
