Advocacy Group Claims to Have Scraped Millions of Music Tracks from the Streaming Giant
An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote 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 its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
