A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for material to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group 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 means of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
