Activist Collective Asserts to Have Scraped Millions of Music Tracks from the Streaming Giant
An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music taken 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
