An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Observers noted the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform 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 constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio taken 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.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
