An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 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 leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
