A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little 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.
