A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course 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”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge 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 the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little 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.
