An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
