An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data 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 describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
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 tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported 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 “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
