A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Observers said the seeming leak could aid AI companies searching for material to develop their models.
A group 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. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms 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 protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
