Activist Collective Asserts to Have Scraped Millions of Music Files from Spotify
An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public 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.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
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 Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
