Advocacy Collective Asserts to Have Extracted Countless of Audio Files from Spotify
An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, 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].
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the music acquired 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
