A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Observers noted the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of Spotify”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
