An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed 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 start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
