Advocacy Group Claims to Have Extracted Countless of Audio Files from Spotify
An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Observers said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, 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,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
