Advocacy Collective Claims to Have Extracted Countless of Music Tracks from Spotify
An activist group has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for material to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing 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 Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of Spotify”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
