An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies searching for data to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
