An activist group has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
