An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed 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,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
