Activist Group Asserts to Have Scraped Countless of Music Tracks from Spotify
A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Observers said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
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 offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data 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 huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
